INCOMMENSURATE POTENTIALS - ANALYTIC AND NUMERICAL PROGRESS

Incommensurate potentials present quite peculiar physical properties due to the deterministic break of translational symmetry; among others the authors mention generalized metal-insulator transitions, mobility edges and the singular behaviour of localization length. The authors stress here how these aspects can be fruitfully described by the joint use of the renormalization procedure and an appropriate envelope function formalism. The application to some significant examples clearly reveals that their approach is well suited to treat more complex and realistic incommensurate potentials.