Effect of Disorder in a Three-Dimensional Layered Chern Insulator

Abstract: We studied effects of disorder in a three dimensional layered Chern insulator. By calculating the localization length and density of states numerically, we found two distict types of metallic phases between Anderson insulator and Chern insulator; one is diffusive metallic (DM) phase and the other is renormalized Weyl semimetal (WSM) phase. We show that longitudinal conductivity at the zero energy state remains finite in the renormalizd WSM phase as well as in the DM phase, while goes to zero at a semimetal-metal quantum phase transition point between these two. Based on the Einstein relation combined with the self-consistent Born analysis, we give a conductivity scaling near the quantum transition point.