From superconductor to Anderson Insulator: harnessing disorder in quantum materials

Superconductors are 21st-century quantum materials that promise fascinating technological and societal benefits once properly harnessed. One of the hurdles we face towards that end is that of disorder: the inherent impurities and imperfections that exist in all real materials. Recently, there has been significant progress in the development of numerical tools capable of treating different ranges of disorder, allowing for a more robust investigation into its effects on the spectral and conducting properties of materials. In this work, using the in-house typical-medium theory of the single-site attractive Hubbard model on a Bethe lattice, we aim to explore the effects of strong disorder on superconductive properties. In particular, our focus is the study of disorder-induced Anderson localization and the associated superconductor-insulator transition (SIT). We construct a phase diagram in the disorder and electron-electron interaction parameter space and demonstrate how sufficiently strong disorder can destroy superconductivity in materials.