Critical exponent for the Anderson transition in the three-dimensional orthogonal universality class

Abstract

We report a careful finite size scaling study of the metal–insulator transition in Anderson's model of localization. We focus on the estimation of the critical exponent ν that describes the divergence of the localization length. We verify the universality of this critical exponent for three different distributions of the random potential: box, normal and Cauchy. Our results for the critical exponent are consistent with the measured values obtained in experiments on the dynamical localization transition in the quantum kicked rotor realized in a cold atomic gas.