Glass Transition and the Coulomb Gap in Electron Glasses

2004/06/14 by Markus Müller, M. Mueller, L. B. Ioffe · 105 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Connection (principal bundle) #Coulomb #Electron #Glass transition #Nuclear magnetic resonance #Phase (matter) #Phase transition #Physics #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Random lasers and scattering media #Spin glass #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.str-el

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.93.256403

published in Physical Review Letters 93(25), 256403 (American Physical Society)

arxiv created 2004/06/14 · openalex publication_date 2004/12/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We establish the connection between the presence of a glass phase and the appearance of a Coulomb gap in disordered materials with strongly interacting electrons. Treating multiparticle correlations in a systematic way, we show that in the case of strong disorder a continuous glass transition takes place whose Landau expansion is identical to that of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin glass. We show that the marginal stability of the glass phase controls the physics of these systems: it results in slow dynamics and leads to the formation of a Coulomb gap.

Citations

• Structural glass on a lattice in the limit of infinite dimensions
• Solution of 'Solvable model of a spin glass'
• The 3-SAT problem with large number of clauses in the ∞-replica symmetry breaking scheme
• Electronic Correlation Effects and the Coulomb Gap at Finite Temperature
• Coulomb gap and low temperature conductivity of disordered systems

Cited by

• Numerical Investigation of Glassy Dynamics in Low-Density Systems
• Marginal Stability in Structural, Spin, and Electron Glasses
• Avalanches in mean-field models and the Barkhausen noise in spin-glasses
• Electron Glass Dynamics
• Nonequilibrium transport and electron-glass effects in thin GexTe films