Absence of Anderson localization in certain random lattices.

Abstract

We report on the transition between an Anderson localized regime and a conductive regime in a one-dimensional microwave scattering system with correlated disorder. We show experimentally that when long-range correlations are introduced, in the form of a power-law spectral density with power larger than 2, the localization length becomes much bigger than the sample size and the transmission peaks typical of an Anderson localized system merge into a pass band. As other forms of long-range correlations are known to have the opposite effect, i.e., to enhance localization, our results show that care is needed when discussing the effects of correlations, as different kinds of long-range correlations can give rise to very different behavior.