Low density expansion for Lyapunov exponents

Abstract

A perturbative formula for the Lyapunov exponent of a one-dimensional random medium for weakly coupled disorder was first given by Thouless [12] and then proven rigorously by Pastur and Figotin [9]. Anomalies in the perturbation theory at the band center were discovered by Kappus and Wegner [7] and further discussed by various other authors [2,3,11]. The Lyapunov exponent is then identified with the inverse localization length of the system. This short note concerns the behavior of the Lyapunov exponent for a low density of impurities, each of which may, however, be large. The presented method is as [6,10,11] a further application of diagonalizing the transfer matrices without perturbation (here the low density of impurities) and then rigorously controlling the error terms by means of oscillatory sums of rotating modified Prüer phases. Some of the oscillatory sums remain large if the rotation phases (here the quasi-momenta) are rational. This leads to supplementary contributions of the Kappus-Wegner type. © Springer 2006.