# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

In most natural structures disorder and random coordination are the rule rather than an exception. Therefore the investigation of random tessellations has become a subject of growing interest . In addition to the structures found in nature, the Voronoi construction, a generalization of the Wigner-Seitz construction, allows to generate tessellations from sets of arbitrarily distributed points . The random Voronoi tessellation has served as the prototype of topologically disordered structures in physics . The aim of this work is a first study of the influence of random coordination on the properties of the electronic spectra in topologically disordered structures. Similar structures are expected in liquid metals or alloys. Here we analyze a tight-binding (TB) model with neighbor hopping on certain two-dimensional (2D) random graphs.

## 2 Tight-binding model on a random graph

A simple topological model introduced by Le Caër  allows to generate efficiently random mosaics that are very similar to Voronoi tessellations generated from disordered arrangements of repulsive particles . Starting point of this model is the triangular structure represented in Fig. 1a (dashed lines). Disorder is achieved by random flips of the diagonal bonds which are performed with probability $`p`$, yielding the most disordered structures for $`p=0.5`$. As an example, the central bond has been flipped in Fig. 1b. The dual graphs, the mosaics, obtained by connection of neighboring triangles, are represented as solid lines in Fig. 1.

The TB Hamiltonian is given as

$$H=\underset{i,j=1}{\overset{N}{}}t_{i,j}c_i^{}c_j,$$
(1)   
where $`i,j`$ label the sites of the 2D random graph. The total number of sites is $`N`$, and $`c_i^{}`$ ($`c_i`$) denotes a fermionic creation (annihilation) operator on site $`i`$ and we always use periodic boundary conditions. The hopping matrix element between neighboring sites $`i`$ and $`j`$ is $`t_{i,j}=1`$ and zero otherwise. The eigenvalues and eigenstates of the TB Hamiltonian are calculated employing standard diagonalization methods and Lanczos’ algorithm.

## 3 Density of States

For the regular structures with $`p=0`$, the density of states (DOS) can be obtained analytically. The dispersion relation of the triangular structure reads

$$ϵ_\mathrm{T}(𝒌)=2\left[\mathrm{cos}(k_x)+\mathrm{cos}(k_y)+\mathrm{cos}(k_x+k_y)\right],$$
(2)   
where $`𝒌=(k_x,k_y)`$. In the infinite lattice, the DOS is then given as

$$\rho _\mathrm{T}(E)=\left(4\pi ^2\right)^1𝑑𝒌\delta (Eϵ_\mathrm{T}(𝒌))$$
(3)   
where the integration is performed over the first Brillouin zone, i.e., $`k_x,k_y[\pi ,\pi )`$. This integral can be expressed in terms of complete elliptic integrals of the first kind. The resulting DOS is shown in Fig. 2. Note the logarithmic singularity at $`E=2`$.

For the mosaic structure at $`p=0`$, the dispersion relation is found to be

$$ϵ_\mathrm{M}(𝒌)=\pm \sqrt{3+ϵ_\mathrm{T}(𝒌)}.$$
(4)   
The corresponding DOS

$$\rho _\mathrm{M}(E)=|E|\rho _\mathrm{T}(E^23)$$
(5)   
with logarithmic singularities at $`E=\pm 1`$ is also shown in Fig. 2. It is symmetric about $`E=0`$ because the ordered mosaic is bipartite.

Fig. 2 also shows the DOS of the most disordered structures with $`p=0.5`$, obtained by averaging over $`50`$ realizations on a system of $`N=60\times 60`$ sites. These DOS are rather smooth, apart from oscillations at large energies which also show up in finite-size data for the ordered structures. The logarithmic singularities are washed out by the disorder, and the negative-energy peak for the mosaic structure almost disappears. However, the positive-energy peak for the mosaic structure survives for $`p=0.5`$.

## 4 Energy level distributions

We now turn our attention to the statistical properties of the eigenvalue spectrum of the Hamiltonian (1). Here, we focus on the level-spacing distribution (LSD) $`P(s)`$ of the normalized energy spacings $`s`$. In energetically disordered systems the metal-insulator transition (MIT) in the 3D Anderson model of localization is accompanied by a transition of the LSD. In the metallic regime, one finds level repulsion with $`P(s)=P_{\mathrm{GOE}}(s)`$ of the Gaussian orthogonal random matrix ensemble (GOE) , whereas in the insulating regime, there is level clustering described by Poisson’s law $`P_\mathrm{P}(s)=\mathrm{exp}(s)`$. Level clustering is also expected for ordered structures. For states at the MIT, an intermediate LSD has been observed .

We have computed the LSD of the complete spectrum by properly unfolding the spectrum  and averaging over $`50`$ realizations on a system of $`60\times 60`$ sites. In Fig. 3, we show the results for random graphs with $`p=0.01`$ and $`p=0.5`$ in comparison to $`P_{\mathrm{GOE}}(s)`$ and $`P_\mathrm{P}(s)`$. Both the mosaic and the triangulation data show an enhanced level repulsion with increasing $`p`$. The topological structures for $`p=0.01`$ are still rather close to the ordered system. Thus it is no surprise that the LSD in Fig. 3 still shows reminiscences of level clustering. However, from an investigation of the system size dependence we expect that even the $`p=0.01`$ data tend towards the $`P_{\mathrm{GOE}}(s)`$ result for increasing $`N`$.

We have also studied the behavior of other spectral correlations such as the spectral rigidity $`\mathrm{\Delta }_3`$ . Our results indicate that there are still characteristic deviations from the GOE behavior at the presently considered system sizes, although the system size dependence again shows a tendency towards GOE. This is further corroborated by an analysis of the statistical properties of the eigenfunctions. Results will be published elsewhere.

## 5 Looking at the eigenstates

In Fig. 4 we show the probability density of a typical eigenfunction $`\psi (𝒓)`$ for the triangular structure at energy $`E1.5`$ close to the center of the band. In agreement with the results presented above, we find that the eigenfunction extends over the whole system. This state is of course not a Bloch state, but nevertheless may be viewed as a superposition of eigenstates of the ordered system at energies $`E^{}=E\pm \mathrm{\Delta }E`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ represents an energy level broadening due to the disorder. An eigenstate of the weakly disordered system in Fourier space should therefore exhibit a broadened Fermi surface when interpreting $`E`$ as the Fermi energy . We also plot the probability density of the Fourier-transformed eigenstate $`\stackrel{~}{\psi }(𝒌)`$ in Fig. 4 and compare it to the sharp Fermi surface of the ordered structure. The latter can easily be computed from the dispersion relation (2). For the strongly disordered case at $`p=0.5`$ we find an almost four-fold symmetry, whereas the ordered triangulated structure only has a reflection symmetry with respect to the line $`k_x=k_y`$. This is to be expected because for $`p=0.5`$ both orientations for the diagonals (cp. Fig. 1) are equally probable. Thus the four-fold symmetry of the square lattice is restored on average.

Similar results hold for the mosaic structures.

## 6 Conclusions

We have considered the spectral properties of a TB Hamiltonian defined on certain 2D random graphs. Although the systems are not energetically disordered, the LSD exhibits level repulsion much as for the energetically disordered Anderson model of localization in the metallic regime  and also for TB models defined on quasiperiodic tilings . However, more evidence, such as the spectral rigidity mentioned above, is needed before we can conclusively decide whether the level repulsion is indeed identical to the behavior of GOE. We remark that preliminary results for eigenfunction statistics may indicate systematic deviations from the GOE results for the most disordered mosaic structures.   
We thank F. Milde for programming help in the initial stages of this project.