All ETDs from UAB

Advisory Committee Chair

Gunter Stolz

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

2007

Degree Name by School

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) College of Arts and Sciences

Abstract

We study a unitary version of the one-dimensional Anderson model, given by a five diagonal deterministic unitary operator multiplicatively perturbed by a random phase matrix. This operator models the time evolution of an electron in a one-dimensional metal ring subject to a magnetic field that linearly increases with time. We fully characterize positivity and vanishing of the Lyapunov exponent for this model for arbitrary distributions of the random phases. This includes Bernoulli distributions, where in certain cases a finite number of critical spectral values, with vanishing Lyapunov exponent, exists. Thus, we prove that for all non-trivial distributions the model has no absolutely continuous spectrum. For non-singular distributions of the random phases, we show strong spectral localization, i.e. the spectrum is pure point almost surely with exponentially decaying eigenfunctions. Moreover, if the random phases have an absolutely continuous distribution with bounded density, the model is shown to be dynamically localized, i.e. the probability of finding an electron in a high energy state is exponentially small for all time

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.