Macroscopic conductivity of free fermions in disordered media

Abstract

We conclude our analysis of the linear response of charge transport in lattice systems of free fermions subjected to a random potential by deriving general mathematical properties of its conductivity at the macroscopic scale. The present paper belongs to a succession of studies on Ohm and Joule's laws from a thermodynamic viewpoint starting with [1-3]. We show, in particular, the existence and finiteness of the conductivity measure μΣ for macroscopic scales. Then we prove that, similar to the conductivity measure associated to Drude's model, μΣ converges in the weak*-topology to the trivial measure in the case of perfect insulators (strong disorder, complete localization), whereas in the limit of perfect conductors (absence of disorder) it converges to an atomic measure concentrated at frequency ν = 0. However, the AC-conductivity μΣ| ℝ\{0} does not vanish in general: We show that μΣ(ℝ\{0}) > 0, at least for large temperatures and a certain regime of small disorder.