4 research outputs found
Manifestation of ageing in the low temperature conductance of disordered insulators
We are interested in the out of equilibrium phenomena observed in the
electrical conductance of disordered insulators at low temperature, which may
be signatures of the electron coulomb glass state. The present work is devoted
to the occurrence of ageing, a benchmark phenomenon for the glassy state. It is
the fact that the dynamical properties of a glass depend on its age, i.e. on
the time elapsed since it was quench-cooled. We first critically analyse
previous studies on disordered insulators and question their interpretation in
terms of ageing. We then present new measurements on insulating granular
aluminium thin films which demonstrate that the dynamics is indeed age
dependent. We also show that the results of different relaxation protocols are
related by a superposition principle. The implications of our findings for the
mechanism of the conductance slow relaxations are then discussed