# Critical Quantum Chaos in 2⁢𝐷 Disordered Systems with Spin-Orbit Coupling

## Abstract

We examine the validity of the recently proposed semi-Poisson level spacing distribution function $`P(S)`$, which characterizes ‘critical quantum chaos’, in $`2D`$ disordered systems with spin-orbit coupling. At the Anderson transition we show that the semi-Poisson $`P(S)`$ can describe closely the critical distribution obtained with averaged boundary conditions, over Dirichlet in one direction with periodic in the other and Dirichlet in both directions. We also obtain a sub-Poisson linear number variance $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2(E)\chi _0+\chi E`$, with asymptotic value $`\chi 0.07`$. The obtained critical statistics, intermediate between Wigner and Poisson, is relevant for disordered systems and chaotic models.

In mesoscopic physics the effect of disorder on the electron propagation leads to the zero-temperature quantum Anderson metal-insulator transition, which arises from the competition between quantum tunelling and interference, as a function of disorder. For weak disorder the electrons diffuse, due to quantum tunelling, and the system is metallic with correlated chaotic energy levels and ‘level-repulsion’ described by Wigner statistics . In the case of strong disorder the electrons localize in random positions, due to quantum interference, and the system becomes insulating, having non-chaotic completely uncorrelated (random) energy levels which show ‘level attraction’ and obey ordinary Poisson statistics. In order to see the metal-insulator transition high enough space dimensionality (usually greater than $`2`$) is required and at the critical point, which corresponds to an intermediate value of disorder, the level statistics changes from Wigner to Poisson . The critical electrons are neither extended nor localized and it is believed that a new universal critical statistics, intermediate between Wigner and Poisson, should apply . We aim to address the question of the critical statictics in two dimensions ($`2D`$), where a metal-insulator transition occurs in the presence of spin-orbit coupling .

The stationary energy levels of $`2D`$ quantum billiards (e.g. in the form of the stadium), with zero potential inside and infinity outside, can also display quantum chaotic behavior . The analogies in the level statistical description bring together the two fields of mesoscopic physics and quantum chaos and have been exploited in the past for understanding important phenomena in both areas. In this respect, Wigner statistics was originally conjectured to apply for quantum systems with chaotic classical dynamics, since the levels resemble the eigenvalues found in appropriate random matrix ensembles, introduced long ago . On the other hand, integrable systems correspond to Poisson statistics having completely uncorrelated (random) eigenvalues. The key question is again what happens at criticality, between chaos and integrability, similarly to the transition between metal and insulator. Recently, a new distribution was proposed to describe critical levels statistics , which contains both Wigner and Poisson features, as the main theme of what is called ‘critical quantum chaos’. This intermediate distribution can be derived from a short range plasma model  and was realized in pseudo-integrable systems, such as the classically non-integrable but of zero metric entropy rational triangle billiards , and corresponds to other solvable models . In disordered systems the intermediate distribution, named semi-Poisson, was shown to characterize critical states at the $`3D`$ metal-insulator transition  and the energy levels of few electrons in the presence of interactions .

FIG. 1. Energy levels $`E`$ versus disorder $`W`$, for a $`2D`$ disordered system with spin-orbit coupling. The metal-insulator critical point $`W_c=8.55`$, marked with a broken line, separates chaotic levels (on the left) with ‘level-repulsion’ and ‘spectral rigidity’ described by Wigner statistics, from non-chaotic levels (on the right) with ‘level attraction’ and ‘spectral randomness’ described by Poisson statistics. In this paper we address what happens at the metal-insulator transition (broken line).

In Fig.1 the energy levels $`E`$ obtained from our $`2D`$ disordered system are displayed as a function of disorder $`W`$. The behavior of the levels is seen clearly to change at the critical point of the metal-insulator transition $`W_c`$, which separates chaotic levels (on the left) from non-chaotic levels (on the right). The chaotic levels are more regular (correlated) than the non-chaotic levels, which are uncorrelated (random). The ‘level-repulsion’ effect can be seen on the chaotic levels and the ‘level-attraction’ on the non-chaotic levels, where degeneracies exist. The displayed levels in Fig. 1 are obtained for one random configuration from a system of linear size $`L=30`$, by keeping all the energies at the middle of the spectrum, making the density of states constant at every $`W`$. The overall ‘spectral rigidity’, seen in the metallic chaotic levels, can be contrasted with the ‘spectral randomness’ of the insulating non-chaotic levels. The surprising result, also visualized in this figure, is that the chaotic levels appear more ‘regular’ than the non-chaotic ones.

The question addressed in this paper is: ‘what is the level statistics at the critical broken line of Fig. 1?’ This study is done in connection to the scenario of ‘critical quantum chaos’, which is summarized in a semi-Poisson level spacing distribution function $`P(S)`$ and a sub-Poisson linear number variance $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2(E)`$, which measures level-fluctuations in a given energy window $`E`$. Moreover, in order to examine the validity of the semi-Poisson $`P(S)`$ different boundary conditions (BC) must be considered, in the spirit of recent important findings . The fact that the critical level fluctuations are at the same time scale-invariant (size-independent) and dependent on BC was explained by invoking the concept of the critical conductance . The influence of boundary conditions on the critical level statistics, without affecting the critical disorder, has also been demonstrated for a different critical $`2D`$ model .

The main features of ‘critical quantum chaos’ for systems characterized by the universality index $`\beta =1,2,4`$ are summarized in: (i) The semi-Poisson $`P(S)`$ level spacing distribution which shows Wigner-like repulsion $`S^\beta `$ at small spacings $`S<<1`$ and is exponential, Poisson-like, $`\mathrm{exp}((\beta +1)S)`$ at large spacings $`S>>1`$, overall described by the scale-invariant normalized semi-Poisson curve

$$P(S)=AS^\beta \mathrm{exp}((\beta +1)S),$$
(1)   
with the constant values $`A=4`$, $`27/2`$ and $`3125/24`$ obtained from normalization, respectively. The spacing distribution $`P(S)`$, by applying a ‘level-unfolding’ procedure which keeps the level-density constant, corresponds to $`S=1`$. (ii) The sub-Poisson number variance, which defines the level number fluctuations in an energy window $`E`$, with the mean number proportional to $`E`$ after ‘unfolding’, according to this scenario is

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_2(E)\chi _0+\chi E,$$
(2)   
defining the level compressibility $`\chi `$. The value of $`\chi `$ ranges between $`0`$ (chaos) and $`1`$ (integrability) and was related to the multifractality of the critical wavefunctions .

The considered disordered system displays a transition in $`2D`$ with energy levels which obey Wigner statistics for the metal (with $`\beta =4`$) and Poisson statistics for the insulator (see Fig. 1). At criticality, where one expects ‘critical quantum chaos’ to apply, numerical work suggested level-repulsion in $`3D`$ for small $`S`$ , also later shown in $`2D`$ . In order to study carefully the level fluctuations in the critical region it is important to identify the crucial role of BC . We find that for the three considered kinds of BC the critical distribution function shows level repulsion at small spacings and is Poisson-like at large spacings. However, when considering an averaged distribution over the cases: 1) Dirichlet BC in both directions and 2) periodic BC in one direction and Dirichlet in the other, the obtained distribution is seen to be remarkably close to the scale-invariant semi-Poisson curve of Eq. (1), appropriate for $`\beta =4`$ (see Fig. 3 below).

The theoretical framework to study the Anderson transition can classify disordered systems into three universality classes, depending on whether the Hamiltonian preserves the time-reversal invariance or the rotational invariance, in direct analogy with the random matrix theory description of quantum chaotic systems . Zero spin-orbit corresponds to the orthogonal universality class ($`\beta =1`$) and finite spin-orbit breaks the rotational invariance so that one obtains the symplectic universality class ($`\beta =4`$). In our calculations we consider a two-dimensional disordered system, with spin-orbit coupling for spin-$`\frac{1}{2}`$ particles, described by the Hamiltonian 

$$=\underset{i,\sigma }{}ϵ_ic_{i,\sigma }^+c_{i,\sigma }+\underset{(i,j)}{}\underset{(\sigma ,\sigma ^{^{}})}{}V_{i,j;\sigma ,\sigma ^{^{}}}c_{i,\sigma }^+c_{j,\sigma ^{^{}}},$$
(3)   
where $`i`$ labels the $`L^2`$ square lattice sites and $`\sigma =\pm 1/2`$ is the spin index on each site. The second sum is taken over all nearest neighbour lattice pairs $`(i,j)`$ and the random on site potential $`ϵ_i`$ is a spin independent uniformly distributed random variable, chosen from a probability distribution of width $`W`$. In this case the nearest neighbour hoppings $`V_{i,j}`$ are random $`2\times 2`$ matrices describing spin rotation, due to spin-orbit, on every lattice bond $`(i,j)`$. In the spinor space they are represented by

$$V_{i,j}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1+i\mu V^z\hfill & \mu V^y+i\mu V^x\hfill \\ \mu V^y+i\mu V^x\hfill & 1i\mu V^z\hfill \end{array}\right)_{ij},$$
(4)   
where $`\mu `$ denotes the spin-orbit coupling and the $`V^x,V^y`$ and $`V^z`$, defined for every bond $`(i,j)`$, are real and independent random variables chosen from a uniform probability distribution on the interval $`[\frac{1}{2},+\frac{1}{2}]`$. For the rest the spin-orbit strength is fixed to $`\mu =2`$ and the disorder is chosen to lie exactly at the critical point $`W_c=8.55`$ .

We compute the eigenvalues from Eq. (3) by diagonalizing numerically the corresponding Hamiltonian matrices for large square lattices. The statistical analysis of energy levels must be done on a constant density of states using an ‘unfolding procedure’. In order to achieve the level unfolding for the considered disordered system it is sufficient to obtain the average of the integrated density of states $`𝒩`$, locally at $`E`$, by repeating many times the disorder configuration creating a statistical ensemble. Then the ‘raw’ spacings $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i=E_iE_{i1}`$ are replaced by the ‘unfolded’ new ones $`S_i=𝒩_{av}(E_i)𝒩_{av}(E_{i1})(E_iE_{i1})\frac{𝒩_{av}(E)}{E}=(E_iE_{i1})/\mathrm{\Delta }`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the local mean spacing around $`E_i`$ or equivalently the inverse density of states of the raw data. In the numerical calculations we considered eigenvalues within the energy window $`[2,2]`$ performing $`2700,1200,675`$ and $`794`$ random configuration runs in each case, with $`L=20,30,40`$ and $`60`$, respectively. The total number of eigenvalues from all random configurations for each BC is about $`400,000`$ for $`L=20,30,40`$ and $`1,000,000`$ for $`L=60`$. These ‘raw’ data were ‘unfolded’ in the described way.

FIG. 2. This figure shows the variation of the critical $`P(S)`$ for three choices of BC for a system of linear size $`L`$. The mean distribution over the three cases is shown by the continuous black line. The Wigner distribution (dotted line) is also shown.

The obtained $`P(S)`$ at criticality is shown in Fig. 2 for the three different choices of BC. The computed curves are, clearly, very different, in agreement with the corresponding $`3D`$ results for $`\beta =1`$ . They are very different from the Wigner or Poisson curves while their average, over the three BC, cannot fit to the semi-Poisson, either. However, the average over Dirichlet (hard wall) in both directions $`(00)`$ and periodic in one direction with Dirichlet in the other $`(10)`$, which is displayed in Fig. 3 for various system sizes, gives a distribution very well described by the semi-Poisson curve of Eq. 1. This is the most important result of the paper and shows the validity of the semi-Poisson for the chosen specific average over BC at criticality. The obtained semi-Poisson is also in agreement with recent results for the critical $`P(S)`$ at the metal-insulator transition in $`3D`$ disordered systems, where the semi-Poisson was obtained by averaging over all possible combinations of BC .

FIG. 3. The mean $`P(S)`$ distribution of the (10) and (00) combinations of BC for several system sizes $`L`$ is shown to follow closely the semi-Poisson distribution $`P(S)=(3125/24)S^4\mathrm{exp}(5S)`$ (Eq. (1) for $`\beta =4`$) (black line). The Wigner (dotted line) and the Poisson (dashed line) are also plotted.

The longer, in the $`E`$-range, critical spectral fluctuations are described by a linear number variance $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2(E)\chi _0+\chi E`$, with the compressibility $`\chi `$ related to the critical wavefunction dimension $`D_2^\psi `$ and the space dimension $`d`$ via $`\chi =(1/2)(1D_2^\psi /d)`$ . In the considered model previous studies gave $`D_2^\psi 1.63`$ . For a rather small energy window $`E`$ (see Fig. 4) the level number variance is shown to be linear with level compressibility $`\chi `$ which varies with the chosen BC. However, when the energy window $`E`$ increases the result becomes independent of BC, as was already shown in $`3D`$ . The obtained asymptotic level compressibility in this case becomes $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2(E)/E\chi 0.07`$ which leads to a $`D_2^\psi `$, rather close to the expected value according to the previous formula. The obtained value of $`\chi `$ in $`2D`$ should be contrasted with the higher $`3D`$ asymptotic value $`\chi 0.27`$ .

The main result from our calculations, done on a square random lattice and not on a peculiarly shaped non-random billiard, is the validity of the semi-Poisson statistics at the metal-insulator transition in $`2D`$ disordered systems with spin-orbit coupling. However, the semi-Poisson $`P(S)`$ is obtained for the averaged distribution over two specific BC. It must be pointed out that only the main part of the distribution agrees surprisingly well with the analytical result. For large $`S`$, where the dependence on BC should become less important, we have not suceeded to describe its tails, possibly due to their exponentially small nature. In this case the appropriate statistical measure becomes the number variance since longer range level correlations are needed. We find a linear number variance $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2(E)\chi E`$ which becomes independent of the BC choice. The obtained $`\chi `$ is close to the expected value from the formula via $`D_2^\psi `$.

FIG. 4. The number variance $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2(E)`$ vs the energy window $`E`$ for the two BC (00) and (10). The straight lines fit the data giving slopes corresponding to non-asymptotic $`\chi `$ values. The Wigner (dotted line) and the Poisson (dashed line) are also displayed for comparison.

In conclusion, we have shown the validity of the semi-Poisson level statistics at the critical point of the metal-insulator transition with $`\beta =4`$ in $`2D`$. The semi-Poisson curve is shown to describe very well the main part of the computed distribution for a specific average over BC and is similar to recent results for critical disordered systems and weakly chaotic quantum systems. Our calculations, on one hand, can give a justification for the averaging over boundary conditions recently shown to lead to the semi-Poisson statistics at the mobility edge . On the other hand, suggest that such an average might be related to the bandwidth distributions, by repeating periodically the square, as it was recently shown for a non-random one-dimensional critical quasi-periodic model . Clearly, more work is needed to examine the validity of the critical semi-Poisson distribution, also for $`3D`$ disordered systems with spin-orbit coupling and systems in the presence of a magnetic field ($`\beta =2`$).

This work was supported by a TMR network of EU and a Greek-Chineese collaboration G.S.S.T. Useful discussions with J.-L. Pichard and G. Montambaux are gratefully aknowledged.

FIG. 5. $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2(E)/E`$ versus $`E`$ for a much broader range of $`E`$ where the independence on BC is seen. The asymptotic value approximates $`\chi 0.07`$.