Anomalous Quantum Diffusion at the Superfluid-Insulator Transition

Abstract

We consider the problem of the superconductor-insulator transition in the presence of disorder, assuming that the fermionic degrees of freedom can be ignored so that the problem reduces to one of Cooper pair localization. Weak disorder drives the critical behavior away from the pure critical point, initially towards a diffusive fixed point. We consider the effects of Coulomb interactions and quantum interference at this diffusive fixed point. Coulomb interactions enhance the conductivity, in contrast to the situation for fermions, essentially because the exchange interaction is opposite in sign. The interaction-driven enhancement of the conductivity is larger than the weak-localization suppression, so the system scales to a perfect conductor. Thus, it is a consistent possibility for the critical resistivity at the superconductor-insulator transition to be zero, but this value is only approached logarithmically. We determine the values of the critical exponents $\eta ,z,\nu$ and comment on possible implications for the interpretation of experiments.

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