Fractional Moment Estimates for Random Unitary Operators

We consider unitary analogs of d-dimensional Anderson models on l²( $$\mathbb(z)$$^d) defined by the product U=D S where S is a deterministic unitary and D is a diagonal matrix of i.i.d. random phases. The operator S is an absolutely continuous band matrix which depends on parameters controlling the size of its off-diagonal elements. We adapt the method of Aizenman–Molchanov to get exponential estimates on fractional moments of the matrix elements of U(U –z)^–1, provided the distribution of phases is absolutely continuous and the parameters correspond to small off-diagonal elements of S. Such estimates imply almost sure localization for U.