Effect of Disorder in a Three-Dimensional Layered Chern Insulator

Abstract

We studied the effects of disorder in a three-dimensional layered Chern insulator, which, in the clean limit, is either a Chern insulator or a Weyl semimetal depending on an interlayer coupling strength. By calculating the localization length by the transfer matrix method, we found two distinct types of metallic phases between the Anderson insulator and the Chern insulator: one is a diffusive metallic phase and the other is a renormalized Weyl semimetal phase. By calculating the conductance and density of states, we characterize these two metallic phases and reveal a critical nature of a quantum critical line between these two metallic phases.