Anisotropic Topological Anderson Transitions in Chiral Symmetry Classes

Abstract: We study quantum phase transitions of three-dimensional disordered systems in the chiral classes (AIII and BDI) with and without weak topological indices. We show that the systems with a nontrivial weak topological index universally exhibit an emergent thermodynamic phase where wave functions are delocalized along one spatial direction but exponentially localized in the other two spatial directions, which we call the quasi-localized phase. Our extensive numerical study clarifies that the critical exponent of the Anderson transition between the metallic and quasi-localized phases, as well as that between the quasi-localized and localized phases, are different from that with no weak topological index, signaling the new universality classes induced by topology. The quasi-localized phase and concomitant topological Anderson transition manifest themselves in the anisotropic transport phenomena of disordered weak topological insulators and nodal-line semimetals, which exhibit the metallic behavior in one direction but the insulating behavior in the other directions.