Physical Review B (Condensed Matter and Materials Physics)
Print Issue of 1 January 2002

Phys. Rev. B 65, 012506 (2002) (4 pages)

Thermal metal in network models of a disordered two-dimensional superconductor

J. T. Chalker,1 N. Read,2 V. Kagalovsky,3,4 B. Horovitz,4 Y. Avishai,4 and A. W. W. Ludwig5
1Theoretical Physics, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 3NP, United Kingdom
2Department of Physics, Yale University, P.O. Box 208120, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8120
3Negev Academic College of Engineering, Beer-Sheva 84100, Israel
4Department of Physics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel
5Physics Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106-4030

(Received 5 July 2001; published 4 December 2001)

We study the symmetry class for localization which arises from models of noninteracting quasiparticles in disordered superconductors that have neither time-reversal nor spin-rotation invariance. Two-dimensional systems in this category, which is known as class D, can display phases with three different types of quasiparticle dynamics: metallic, localized, or with a quantized (thermal) Hall conductance. Correspondingly, they can show a variety of delocalization transitions. We illustrate this behavior by investigating numerically the phase diagrams of network models with the appropriate symmetry and show the appearance of the metallic phase.

©2001 The American Physical Society

PACS: 73.20.Fz, 72.15.Rn       

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