# Untitled Document

Novel Transport Mechanism for Interacting Electrons 

in Disordered Systems: 

Variable-Range Resonant Tunneling

S.D. Baranovskii<sup>1</sup> and I.S. Shlimak<sup>2</sup>

<sup>1</sup>Institute for Physical Chemistry and Material Sciences Center,

Philipps-University Marburg, D-35032 Marburg, Germany

<sup>2</sup>Jack and Pearl Resnick Institute of Advanced Technology,

Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel

To interpret recent experimental observations of the phononless hopping conduction, we suggest a novel transport mechanism according to which the current-carrying single electrons move via quantum resonant tunneling between localized states brought into resonance by fast electron hops in their environment.

Recent experiments on the quantum Hall effect  and on the hopping transport in 2D Si MOSFETs  and delta-doped GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures  show that prefactor so in the exponential temperature dependence of the hopping conductivity has, under certain conditions, a universal form ($`e^2/h`$)$`f(T/T_0)`$ with $`f`$ $``$1 at $`TT_0`$. Aleiner et al.  have remarked that such an effect can be due to hopping via electron-electron scattering, as considered by Fleishman et al. , rather than via conventional electron-phonon scattering. We suggest below an alternative to this mechanism based on non-Hubbard Coulomb correlations which can account for the observed effects.

To interpret phononless hopping evidenced by experimental observations, it is necessary to take into account electron-electron interactions, though such interactions can also play an important role for phonon-assisted hopping. The role of non-Hubbard Coulomb correlations for the low-temperature hopping conduction was first pointed out by Knotek and Pollak . They considered two types of such correlations which are caused by interaction between electrons on different sites: sequential correlations (SC) and electron polarons (EP). In the case of SC, the single-electron current-determining hops can be assisted by preliminary hops between surrounding states. These preliminary hops prepare the favorable situation for the current-carrying transitions of single electrons. In the case of EP, several electrons hop simultaneously. Such simultaneous multielectron transitions can have lower activation energies than single-electron hops and therefore they can be efficient . In contrast to the case of the sequential transitions, the probability for a simultaneous transition of several electrons involves the product of the factors exp$`\{2r/a\}`$ for each participating single-electron hop (where $`r`$ is the hop distance and $`a`$ is the localization length). Therefore, such transitions can be neglected when the concentration of localized states is sufficiently low, although for intermediate doping levels such transitions can be efficient . Pollak and his coworkers have also emphasized the importance of quantum effects in disordered systems of localized electrons interacting via their Coulomb potentials . By computer simulation they studied the level spacing spectra as a measure of the degree of localization, though not directly addressing the conduction phenomena.

The question most widely discussed related the electron-electron correlations is whether or not the temperature dependences of the hopping conductivity obtained for single-electron hopping are altered by taking into account the many-particle effects. Perez-Garrido et al.  studied this problem by computer simulation and concluded that while both correlation effects have a significant influence on the hopping conductivity, its temperature dependence at low T is described quite well by the dependence predicted by theories of single-electron hopping, although with changed numerical parameters. In the Coulomb gap regime, the Efros-Shklovskii formula should be valid 

$$\sigma \mathrm{exp}\{(T_1/T)^{1/2}\},$$
(1)   
whereas at higher temperatures, the Mott formula applies:

$$\sigma \mathrm{exp}\{(T_2/T)^{1/(d+1)}\},$$
(2)   
where $`d`$ is the spatial dimensionality and $`T_1,T_2`$ are characteristic temperatures.

So far, most research has been concentrated on the phonon-assisted hopping processes. Only one paper  has been devoted to the temperature dependence of the hopping conductivity in the case of phononless hopping. Fleishman et al.  have studied EP correlations, i.e., simultaneous transitions of several electrons in the phononless mode. They succeeded in showing that for the phononless transport of multielectron excitations, the temperature dependence of the conductivity is described by Eq.(2) in the Mott regime. It may well be the case, as proposed by Aleiner et al. , that it is this transport mechanism, which is responsible for the recent observations of the phononless hopping in 2D systems. Not arguing in favour or against this hypothesis, we suggest below an alternative mechanism of the phononless hopping processes which also provides the observed temperature dependencies of the hopping conductivity. We do not aim at calculation of prefactors and concentrate our discussion on exponential terms.

We assume that the current-carrying hop between the sites belonging to the percolation cluster is represented by a single-electron resonant transition, the resonance being prepared by fast assisting hops in the environment of these sites. It is a kind of SC with the current-carrying hop provided by resonant tunneling. At first glance, this looks similar to the picture recently discussed by Agrinskaya and Kozub . They also considered SC and they also assumed assisting hops to be fast compared to the current-carrying hop. However, Agrinskaya and Kozub suggested for the rate $`W`$ of the current-carrying hop expression

$$W\mathrm{exp}\{2r/a\epsilon /kT\},$$
(3)   
where the activation term describes the probability of an assisting hop, and $`r`$ is the distance between the corresponding pair of the current-carrying sites. The activation energy of the current-carrying hop was assumed to vanish due to averaging over fast assisting hops . As long as the assisting hops are due to electron-phonon scattering, the phonon frequency is inherently present in the rate of current-carrying hops of Agrinskaya and Kozub .We argue below that in our mechanism of resonant transitions, the rate $`W`$ of a current-carrying hop does not involve the phonon frequency even if the assisting hops are due to the interaction with phonons.

Let us consider two neighboring sites $`i`$ and $`j`$ belonging to the percolation cluster, so that an electron transition between them is necessary for dc transport. We assume that because of fast electron transitions in the sites surrounding $`i`$ and $`j`$, the electron energies $`\epsilon _i`$ and $`\epsilon _j`$ on the chosen sites fluctuate with some typical frequency $`\omega `$ due to the Coulomb potentials of surrounding electrons. In fact, it is sufficient to consider the fluctuations of just one of the two energies $`\epsilon _i`$ or $`\epsilon _j`$. Due to these electron correlations, a resonant situation

$$\epsilon _i\epsilon _jI_{ij}$$
(4)   
can be established for some short time interval $`t_I`$, where $`I_{ij}`$ $``$ exp$`(r_{ij}/a)`$ is the overlap integral between sites $`i`$ and $`j`$. If the amplitude of the energy fluctuations is $`E`$ $`>`$$`>`$ $`I_{ij}`$, this time interval can be approximated by

$$t_II_{ij}/(E\omega )$$
(5)   
The spreading out of the electron wave function between the resonant sites obeying condition (4) takes a time $`\tau `$ of order of $`\mathrm{}/I_{ij}`$. If the energy fluctuations are fast compared to $`\tau `$, i.e., $`\omega \tau `$ $`>`$$`>`$ 1, then the probability of the transition occuring during one fluctuation period is $`t_I/t`$ and the transition rate is

$$W\omega t_I/\tau $$
(6)   
Using Eq.(5), one obtains

$$WI_{ij}^2/(E\mathrm{})$$
(7)   
This formula shows that the frequency $`\omega `$ of the assisting hops is not involved in the hopping rate for the current-carrying hops if the condition $`\omega \tau `$ $`>`$$`>`$ 1 is fulfilled, i.e., if the assisting hops are much faster than the current-carrying hop. This condition is the main requirement of all SC models.

Above we considered the situation in which the current-carrying pair of sites $`i`$ and $`j`$ already has one electron. In order to satisfy this condition, one should take into account the energy distribution function of the electrons $`f(\epsilon )`$. Therefore, the phononless electron transition rate $`\nu _{ij}`$ from the site $`i`$ to the site $`j`$ has the form

$$\nu _{ij}=Wf(\epsilon _i)[1f(\epsilon _j)]$$
(8)   
where in the Ohmic regime, $`f(\epsilon )`$ should be replaced by the Fermi equilibrium distribution . This leads to the expression

$$\nu _{ij}=\nu _0\mathrm{exp}\{2rij/a\}\mathrm{exp}\{\epsilon _{ij}/kT\}$$
(9)   
for arbitrary positions of $`\epsilon _i`$ and $`\epsilon _j`$ with respect to the Fermi level $`\mu `$. Here

$$\epsilon _{ij}=(1/2)\{\epsilon _i\epsilon _j+\epsilon _i\mu +\epsilon _j\mu \}$$
(10)   
It is worth noting that our expression for $`\epsilon _{ij}`$ differs slightly from the conventional one considered in hopping conduction, not being determined by the phonon characteristics.

In order to calculate the exponential terms in the variable-range hopping (VRH) conductivity using the phononless transition rates determined by Eqs.(9) and (10), one can now repeat the routine derivation described in detail in handbooks, e.g. Ref. . This derivation automatically leads to the dependences (1) and (2) . All phonon-dependent factors in our approach can appear only in terms of the quantity $`\omega `$, which is not present in the final result for the hopping rate (Eq.(9)). The suggested model of electron transport joins together a resonant tunneling mechanism of band conductivity with the necessity of finding an electron in the initial state and an empty final state, which is peculiar for the variable-range hopping conductivity and results in the temperature dependence of this band-like electron motion. It is therefore not surprising that experiments  gives evidence for the dependences (1) and (2) in the phononless VRH regime. We call our mechanism Variable-Range Resonant Tunneling.

At the present stage, it is not possible to determine by comparison with experiment which particular phononless transport mechanism, - that of Ref.6 or the one suggested here - is responsible for the observed effects. Both mechanisms lead to the same temperature dependences of the conductivity. Another problem is to find the conditions for which phononless hopping becomes more efficient than phonon-assisted hopping. The rarity of the observations of the phononless VRH justifies, in most cases, the suggestion that electron-phonon scattering is responsible for VRH transport. However, in the vicinity of the metal-insulator transition, quantum effects should become pronounced , and under such conditions, the phononless mechanism can become dominant. Indeed, recent observations of phononless VRH  have been made on the system close to the metal-insulator transition.

In conclusions, one can claim the following. A novel transport mechanism is suggested for conduction in disordered systems with localized electrons interacting via their Coulomb potentials. It is based on the resonant single-electron tunneling between current-carrying sites brought into resonance by fast electron hops in their surrounding. These assisting hops can be due to electron-phonon scattering. If the typical rate of these transitions is much higher than that of the current-carrying hops, the former does not influence the result for the temperature dependence of VRH conductivity.

We thank M. Pollak and A. Möbius for valuable discussions, in clarifying the results of Ref.6 and Ref.10. Financial support of the Deutscheforschungsgemeinschaft via SFB 383 and of the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie is gratefully acknowledged.

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