Reentrant localization transition, quantum butterfly and robust edge modes in aperiodic zig-zag ladder

Abstract

Low dimensional tight-binding lattices in presence of quasiperiodic disorder generally exhibits localization transition. The system supports diffusive modes upto a limiting strength of disorder and all the eigenstates become localized beyond that critical strength thereby quenching the kinetic signature of the wavepacket. However, moving away from this situation, we demonstrate that with minimal long-range off-diagonal modulation, the eigenspectrum again may offer delocalization of electronic states for some subtle combination of kinetic parameters of the Hamiltonian leading to a second quantum phase change. The localization transitions are associated with the obvious presence of single-particle mobility edges. Multifractal energy landscape also shows quantum butterfly pattern with the in-gap robust edge modes. The re-emerging localization transition is manifested through the evaluation of inverse participation ratio, eigenspectrum and a pertinent quantum dynamical study.