Quantum diffusion and eigenfunction delocalization in a random band matrix model (Q533666)

Let \(H\) be a Hermitian or symmetric random matrix with entries indexed by a finite periodic lattice \(\Lambda_N\subset\mathbb{Z}^d\), where \(d\geq1\) is the dimension and \(N\) is the length of the sides of the lattice. A \textit{band width} \(W\) is fixed such that \(W\leq N/M^{1/6}\), where \(M\) is the number of points in the ball of radius \(W\) in \(\mathbb{Z}^d\). The matrix \(H\) considered is a band matrix with band width \(W\) (i.e. \(H\) has independent identically distributed entries within the band, and zero outside). The entries are required to have particular distributions both in the Hermitian and symmetric cases, but the authors claim such restriction is lifted in further work. The function \[ \varrho(t,x)=\mathbb{E}\left|\left\langle\delta_x,e^{-itH/2}\delta_0\right\rangle\right| \] is considered. This function describes the ensemble average of the quantum transition probability of a particle starting from position 0 ending up at position \(x\) after time \(t\). The authors prove that \(\varrho(t,x)\) behaves diffusively up to time \(t=O(W^{d\kappa})\) if \(\kappa<1/3\). It is also proven that the fraction of eigenvectors subexponentially localized on scales \(W^{1+\kappa d/2}\) converges to zero in probability, uniformly in \(N\geq W^{1+d/6}\).