Quest for Rare Events in three-dimensional Mesoscopic Disordered Metals

Abstract

The study reports on the first large statistics numerical experiment searching for rare eigenstates of anomalously high amplitudes in three-dimensional diffusive metallic conductors. Only a small fraction of a huge number of investigated eigenfunctions generates the far asymptotic tail of their amplitude distribution function. The relevance of the relationship between disorder and spectral averaging, as well as of the quantum transport properties of the investigated mesoscopic samples, for the numerical exploration of eigenstate statistics is divulged. The quest provides exact results to serve as a reference point in understanding the limits of approximations employed in different analytical predictions, and thereby the physics (quantum vs semiclassical) behind large deviations from the universal predictions of random matrix theory.