Eigenstates
Without disorder, the eigenstates are delocalized plane waves.
In the presence of disorder, three scenarios can arise: Delocalized eigenstates, where the wavefunction remains extended; Localized eigenstates, where the wavefunction is exponentially confined to a finite region; Multifractal eigenstates, occurring at the mobility edge, where the wavefunction exhibits a complex, scale-dependent structure.
To distinguish these regimes, it is useful to introduce the inverse participation ratio (IPR).
Delocalized eigenstates
In this case,
. Hence, we expect
Localized eigenstates
In this case,
for
sites and almost zero elsewhere. Hence, we expect
Multifractal eigenstates
The exponent
is called multifractal exponent . It is a non decreasing function with q with some special points:
because the wave fuction is defined on all sites, in general
is the fractal dimension of the object we are considering. It is simply a geometrical property.
imposed by normalization.
To have multifractal behaviour we expect
The exponent
is positive and
is called multifractal spectrum . Its maximum is the fractal dimension of the object, in our case d. We can determine the relation between multifractal spectrum
and exponent
for large L
This means that for
that verifies
we have
Delocalized wave functions have a simple spectrum: For
, we have
and
. Then
becomes
independent.
Multifractal wave functions smooth this edge dependence and display a smooth spectrum with a maximum at
with
. At
,
and
.
Sometimes one writes:
Here
is q-dependent multifractal dimension, smaller than
and larger than zero.
Larkin model
In your homewoork you solved a toy model for the interface:
For simplicity, we assume Gaussian disorder
,
.
You proved that:
- the roughness exponent of this model is
below dimension 4
- The force per unit length acting on the center of the interface is

- at long times the interface shape is
Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \overline{h(q)h(-q)} = \frac{\sigma^2}{q^{d+2\zeta_L}} }
In the real depinning model the disorder is however a non-linear function of h. The idea of Larkin is that this linearization is correct up, Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle r_f}
the length of correlation of the disorder along the h direction . This defines a Larkin length. Indeed from
You get
Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \overline{(h(\ell_L)-h(0))^2}= r_f^2 \quad \ell_L=\left(\frac{r_f}{\sigma} \right)^{1/\zeta_L} }
Above this scale, roguhness change and pinning starts with a crtical force
Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle f_c= \frac{\sigma}{\ell_L^{d/(2 \zeta_L)}} }
In
we have Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \ell_L=\left(\frac{r_f}{\sigma} \right)^{2/3}}