Griffiths effects and quantum critical points in dirty superconductors without spin-rotatio.pdfVIP

a r X i v : c o n d - m a t / 0 0 1 1 2 0 0 v 1 [ c o n d - m a t .s u p r - c o n ] 1 1 N o v 2 0 0 0 Griffiths effects and quantum critical points in dirty superconductors without spin-rotation invariance: One-dimensional examples Olexei Motrunich,1 Kedar Damle,1,2 and David A. Huse1 1 Physics Department, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 2 Physics Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 (November 10, 2000) We introduce a strong-disorder renormalization group (RG) approach suitable for investigating the quasiparticle excitations of disordered superconductors in which the quasiparticle spin is not conserved. We analyze one-dimensional models with this RG and with elementary transfer matrix methods. We find that such models with broken spin rotation invariance generically lie in one of two topologically distinct localized phases. Close enough to the critical point separating the two phases, the system has a power-law divergent low-energy density of states (with a non-universal continuously varying power-law) in either phase, due to quantum Griffiths singularities. This critical point belongs to the same infinite-disorder universality class as the one dimensional particle-hole symmetric Anderson localization problem, while the Griffiths phases in the vicinity of the transition are controlled by lines of strong (but not infinite) disorder fixed points terminating in the critical point. I. INTRODUCTION Recently, there has been considerable theoretical activ- ity concerning the effect of disorder on the quasiparticle spectrum in dirty superconductors with different pairing symmetries.1,2 The basic philosophy underlying most of these developments is to start with a weakly disordered problem and investigate the fate (in some RG sense) of disorder at large length scales using field theoretic meth- ods.3 An analysis of this sort depends most crucially on the possible symmetries of the quasiparticle Hamiltonian, and it is the corresponding univers