Quantum diffusion and delocalization for band matrices with general distribution (Q644338)

The authors consider Hermitian and symmetric random band matrices \(H\) in \(d \geqslant 1\) dimensions. The matrix elements \(H_{xy}\), indexed by \(x,y \in \Lambda \subset {\mathbb{Z}}^d\), are independent and their variances satisfy \[ \sigma_{xy}^2 := \mathbb{E} |H_{xy}|^2 = W^{-d} f((x-y)/W) \] for some probability density \(f\). It is supposed that the law of each matrix element \(H_{xy}\) is symmetric and exhibits subexponential decay. The fact is shown that the time evolution of a quantum particle subject to the Hamiltonian \(H\) is diffusive on time scales \(t \ll W^{d/3}\). The authors also prove that the localization length of the eigenvectors of \(H\) is larger than a factor \(W^{d/6}\) times the band width \(W\). All results are uniform in the size \(|\Lambda|\) of the matrix. This extends the result of \textit{L. Erdős} and \textit{A. Knowles} [Commun. Math. Phys. 303, No. 2, 509--554 (2011; Zbl 1226.15024)] to general band matrices. The authors also show that, for a larger class of random matrices satisfying \(\sum_x \sigma_{xy}^2 = 1\) for all \(y\), the largest eigenvalue of \(H\) is bounded with high probability by \(2 + M^{-2/3+\varepsilon}\) for any \(\varepsilon > 0\), where \(M := 1/(\max_{x,y}\sigma_{xy}^2)\).