Disordered 2d quasiparticles in class D: Dirac fermions with random mass, and dirty superconductors

Disordered noninteracting quasiparticles that are governed by a Majorana-type Hamiltonian prominent examples are dirty superconductors with broken time-reversal and spin-rotation symmetry, or the fermionic representation of the 2d Ising model with fluctuating bond strengths - are called class D. In two dimensions, weakly disordered systems of this kind may possess a metallic phase beyond the insulating phases expected for strong disorder. We show that the 2d metal phase emanates from the free Majorana fermion point, in the direction of the RG trajectory of a perturbed WZW model. To establish this result, we develop a supersymmetric extension of the method of nonabelian bosonization. On the metallic side of the metal-insulator transition, the density of states becomes nonvanishing at zero energy, by a mechanism akin to dynamical mass generation. This feature is explored in a model of N species of disordered Dirac fermions, via the mapping on a nonlinear sigma model, which encapsulates a Z(2) spin degree of freedom. We compute the density of states in a finite system, and obtain agreement with the random-matrix prediction for class D, in the ergodic limit. Vortex disorder, which is a relevant perturbation at the free-fermion point, changes the density of states at low energy and suppresses the local Z2 degree of freedom, thereby leading to a different symmetry class, BD. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.