Absence of conventional quantum phase transitions in itinerant systems with disorder

Abstract

Effects of disorder are examined in itinerant systems close to quantum critical points. We argue that spin fluctuations associated with the long-range part of the RKKY interactions generically induce non-Ohmic dissipation due to rare disorder configurations. This dissipative mechanism is found to destabilize quantum Griffiths phase behavior in itinerant systems with arbitrary symmetry of the order parameter, leading to the formation of a "cluster glass" phase preceding uniform ordering.

4+epsilon pages, 1 figure. Phys. Rev. Lett., in press (2005)