Slow relaxation in electron glasses

Miguel Ortuño

Departamento de Fisica, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain

We review experimental results on slow relaxation of complex systems, focusing on Coulomb glasses. Bellow a critical temperature there is logarithmic relaxation over a very long time range. If we perturb the system for a given time and then let it relax, the conductance decreases as a function of the relaxation time divided by the perturbation time, effect that is called full-aging. We present a new kinetic Monte Carlo algorithm to simulate non-equilibrium relaxation of Coulomb glasses at low temperatures and to try to explain the previous experimental results. It can reach macroscopic times by being able to go out of metastable states very efficiently. The algorithm chooses a transition according to its total probability, including the spatial and energy factors involved in the transition rates of hopping processes. It is a general procedure that can be extended to most slow relaxation systems.

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