Conductivity scaling and absence of localization in disordered nodal line semimetals

Abstract

Transport plays a key role in characterizing topological insulators and semimetals. Understanding the effect of disorder is crucial to assess the robustness of experimental signatures for topology. In this work, we find the absence of localization in nodal line semimetals for long-range scalar disorder and a large range of disorder strengths. Using a continuum transfer matrix approach, we find that the conductivity in the plane and out of the plane of the nodal line increases with system size and disorder strength. We substantiate these findings by a perturbative calculation and show that the conductivity increases with disorder strength using the Kubo formula in the self-consistent Born approximation. We also find that the system remains metallic for vector disorder and that vector disorder can drive a transition from an insulating to a metallic regime. Our results demonstrate the absence of localization in a three-dimensional bulk system.