Influence of boundary conditions on level statistics and eigenstates at the metal-insulator transition

We investigate the influence of the boundary conditions on the scale invariant critical level statistics at the metal-insulator transition of disordered three-dimensional orthogonal and two-dimensional unitary and symplectic tight-binding models. The distribution of the spacings between consecutive eigenvalues is calculated numerically and shown to be different for periodic and Dirichlet boundary conditions whereas the critical disorder remains unchanged. The peculiar correlations of the corresponding critical eigenstates leading to anomalous diffusion seem not to be affected by the change of the boundary conditions. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.