Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Title: No metal-insulator transition for interacting spinless electrons in two dimensions

Abstract: Recently, much interest is focused on the influence of electron-electron interaction (EEI) on the localization properties of two dimensional electrons in disordered systems. It is motivated by the experimental observations of a crossover in the behavior of the conductance of low density two dimensional electrons from an insulating like temperature dependence at low densities to a metallic one at higher densities. In many numerical studies of 2D spinless electrons with EEI numerous equilibrium properties such as many particle energy level statistics, two-electron localization length high above the Fermi energy, persistent current flow patterns, and charge density response to an external perturbation were studied. As function of the interaction strength, some of these quantities undergo qualitative changes. It might then be tempting to interpret it as an evidence for a 2DMIT. However, the properties listed above are not directly related to zero temperature transport properties of the electron system, which are naturally measured in experiments. We therefore carefully examine somequantities which are directly related to transport properties of the system and find that EEI systematically attenuates the transport through the system and enhances its insulating features. Thus, there is no numerical evidence that EEI can drive a transition in the transport properties of spinless electrons.