Electron transport in two-dimensional arrays

2004/01/19 by Julia S. Meyer, Alex Kamenev, L. I. Glazman +1 · 11 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Charge (physics) #Condensed matter physics #Conductance #Crossover #Dimensionless quantity #Electron #Insulator (electricity) #Lattice (music) #Physics #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #Theoretical and Computational Physics #Wigner crystal #cond-mat.mes-hall

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.70.045310

published in Physical Review B 70(4) (American Physical Society) · 12 pages, 4 figures

arxiv created 2004/01/19 · openalex publication_date 2004/07/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We study charge transport in a granular array with high intergrain conductances. We show that the system exhibits a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless crossover from the high-temperature conducting state into a low-temperature insulating state. The crossover takes place at a critical temperature T_BKT\ensuremath∝E_c\phantom\rule0.3em0exexp\ensuremath-g, where E_c is the charging energy of a grain and g⪢1 is the dimensionless intergrain conductance. A uniformly applied gate voltage drives the insulator into a conducting charge liquid state followed by an insulating lattice-pinned Wigner crystal state at larger values of the gate voltage. Technically, we establish correspondence between the charge and phase representations, employing the instanton gas summation in the framework of the phase model.

Citations

• Transition from insulating to non-insulating temperature dependence of the conductivity in granular metals
• Ordering, metastability and phase transitions in two-dimensional systems
• Transport Properties of Granular Metals at Low Temperatures
• Weak charge quantization on a superconducting island
• Quantum effects in Coulomb blockade

Cited by

• Nonperturbative interaction effects in the thermodynamics of disordered wires