Electrons in certain materials stop getting stuck even when you add more disorder and chaos to the system.
The localization length of electrons hits a plateau and refuses to decrease in isolated bands with a quantum metric. This behavior directly contradicts the Anderson localization paradigm, which has been a pillar of physics for 60 years. Normally, adding more flaws or disorder to a material will always make it harder for electrons to move. This research reveals a 'protected' state where the quantum geometry of the material prevents the electrons from becoming fully trapped. This discovery could lead to the development of robust quantum computers that aren't easily disrupted by external noise. It proves that geometry can defend information against chaos.
Quantum Metric Localization and Quantum Metric Protection
arXiv · 2605.03987
The study of disorder effects in electronic systems is one of the central themes in physics. It is well established that in the Anderson localization regime, the localization length of electrons decreases monotonically as the disorder strength increases. Here, we demonstrate that the conventional Anderson localization paradigm fails completely in describing an isolated band with quantum metric, where the quantum metric of the band defines a length scale called the quantum metric length. For an i