Glassy states in fermionic systems with strong disorder and interactions

Abstract

We study the competition between interactions and disorder in two dimensions. Whereas a noninteracting system is always Anderson localized by disorder in two dimensions, a pure system can develop a Mott gap for sufficiently strong interactions. Within a simple model, with short-ranged repulsive interactions, we show that, even in the limit of strong interaction, the Mott gap is completely washed out by disorder for an infinite system for dimensions $D\le 2$. The probability of a nonzero gap falls onto a universal curve, leading to a glassy state for which we provide a scaling function for the frequency dependent susceptibility.

8 pages, 5 figures, expanded to contain some analytical results for one dimension