Berezinskii - Kosteriltz - Thouless transition in disordered multichannel Luttinger liquids.

Abstract

We study the phase transition between conducting and insulating states taking place in disordered multichannel Luttinger liquids with interchannel interactions. We derive renormalization-group equations which are perturbative in disorder but nonperturbative in interaction. In the vicinity of the simultaneous phase transition in all channels, these equations become a set of coupled Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless equations, which we analyze within two models: an array of identical wires and a two-channel model with distinct channels. We show that a competition between disorder and interaction results in a variety of phases, expected to be observable at intermediate temperatures where the interaction and disorder are relevant but weak hybridization and the charge-density-wave interaction may be ignored.