In this talk I will describe the full distribution of conductance at strong disorder in three dimensions within a transfer matrix formulation. Our analytic results confirm numerical evidence that the expected log-normal limit of the distribution is never reached, even in the deeply insulating regime. Moreover, I will show how the variance of the logarithm of the conductance scales with the mean value in a non-trivial way, and the skewness changes sign (the tail becomes the head!) as one approaches the Anderson metal-insulator transition from the deeply insulating limit, all described as a function of a single parameter. The approach suggests a possible single parameter description of the Anderson transition that takes into account the full non-trivial distribution of the conductance.
University of Florida, Gainesville (USA)