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Phys. Rev. B 74, 075205 (2006) [8 pages]

Many electron theory of 1∕f noise in hopping conductivity

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A. L. Burin1, B. I. Shklovskii2, V. I. Kozub3,4, Y. M. Galperin5,3,4, and V. Vinokur4
1Department of Chemistry, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118, USA
2William P. Fine Institute of Theoretical Physics, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA
3A. F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia
4Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA
5Department of Physics, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1048 Blindern, 0316 Oslo, Norway

Received 20 December 2005; revised 19 May 2006; published 16 August 2006

We show that 1∕f noise in the variable-range hopping regime is related to transitions of many-electrons clusters (fluctuators) between two almost-degenerate states. Giant fluctuation times necessary for 1∕f noise are provided by a slow rate of simultaneous tunneling of many localized electrons and by large activation barriers for their consecutive rearrangements. The Hooge constant steeply grows with decreasing temperature because it is easier to find a slow fluctuator at lower temperatures. Our conclusions qualitatively agree with the low-temperature observations of 1∕f noise in p-type silicon and GaAs.

© 2006 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.74.075205
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevB.74.075205
PACS:
71.23.Cq, 72.70.+m, 72.20.Ee, 72.80.Sk
 
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