Model for continuous thermal metal to insulator transition

Abstract

We propose a $d$-dimensional interacting Majorana fermion model with quenched disorder, which gives us a continuous quantum phase transition between a diffusive thermal metal phase with a finite entropy density to an insulator phase with zero entropy density. This model is based on coupled Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model clusters, and hence has a controlled large-$N$ limit. The metal-insulator transition is accompanied by a spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking. We perform controlled calculations to show that the energy diffusion constant jumps to zero discontinuously at the metal-insulator transition, while the time-reversal symmetry-breaking order parameter increases continuously.