The Metal-Insulator Transition is the most fundamental open problem of Solid State Physics, because it requires an understanding of both strong electron-electron interactions and disorder due to defects of impurities. Traditional theories based on treating both disorder and the interactions using weak-coupling (perturbative) approaches have met very little success, requiring new methods. More recent work introduced Dynamical Mean-Field Theory, which is currently regarded as the most successful non-perturbative method for strongly interacting electronic systems. Its simplest implementation in presence of disorder leads to the Coherent Potential Approximation (CPA), which despite capturing some nontrivial disorder effects for correlated strongly electrons, is not able to describe disorder-induced bound state formation (“Anderson localization”). A more sophisticated DMFT-based approach to disorder, the Typical Medium Theory (TMT), proves able to capture both Anderson localization and strong interaction effects at the same footing, thus representing a new order parameter theory of the metal-insulator transition. Here we briefly review several recent applications of these methods, providing insight on how Anderson localization is affected by various interaction effects, including the electronic correlations of Mott-Hubbard type, the role of the lattice deformations and polaronic effects, as well as the effects of electron (Coulomb) glass formation.
Prof. Dobrosavljevic obtained his B.Sc. at the University of Belgrade in 1983, after which he moved to the US, where he earned his M.Sc. (1985) and his Ph.D. ta Brown University (1988). He carried postdoctoral research at the University of Maryland (1989-1991) and Rutgers University (1991-1995). He joined the Faculty at the Department of Physics at Florida State University (FSU), where he is currently a Professor of Physics, since 2006. He is also serving as the Director of the Condensed Matter Sciences – Theory program at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at FSU (2006-present). Prof. Dobrosavljevic is an expert in theories of strongly correlated electronic systems with and without disorder, and is primarily interested in understanding the fundamental nature of the Metal-Insulator Quantum Phase Transition.