Local density of states in a disordered chain: A renormalization group approach

We apply renormalization group techiques to evaluate the local density of phonon states for the isotopically (randomly) disordered linear chain. The method is based on a systematic decimation of atoms in the chain. Numerical studies reveal a richly structured spectrum, in reasonable agreement both with numerical simulations and with exact moments results. This is the first analytic alloy approximation which takes into account potential fluctuations of arbitrary range.