Numerical Study of the Localization-Delocalization Transition for Vibrations in Amorphous Silicon

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Numerical studies of amorphous silicon in harmonic approximation show that the highest 3.5% of vibrational normal modes are localized. As vibrational frequency increases through the boundary separating localized from delocalized modes, near omegac=70meV, (the "mobility edge") there is a localization-delocalization (LD) transition, similar to a second-order thermodynamic phase transition. By a numerical study on a system with 4096 atoms, we are able to see exponential decay lengths of exact vibrational eigenstates, and test whether or not these diverge at omegac. Results are consistent with a localization length xi which diverges above omegac as (omega-omegac)⁻ᵖ where the exponent is p = 1.3 +/- 0.5. Below the mobility edge we find no evidence for a diverging correlation length. Such an asymmetry would contradict scaling ideas, and we suppose it is a finite-size artifact. If the scaling regime is narrower than our 1 meV resolution, then it cannot be seen directly on our finite system.