Transfer Matrices and Disordered Systems

Abstract

Of the many approaches which have been developed for numerical simulations of disordered systems in general, and the Anderson Metal-Insulator transition (MIT) in particular, the transfer matrix has proved the most productive. In this chapter I will present several related approaches that might broadly be considered as transfer matrix methods. As a definition of a transfer matrix we may consider: “An operator which uses a set of quantities defined at one position to generate the same set of quantities at a subsequent position.”