Optical excitation of Electron-Glasses

TL;DR

This paper reviews methods to excite electron-glasses, focusing on near-infrared radiation, and finds that gold doping significantly enhances excitation efficiency, with implications for understanding non-equilibrium dynamics.

Contribution

It demonstrates that gold doping in crystalline indium-oxide markedly increases the efficiency of optical excitation in electron-glasses, revealing new pathways for manipulating their non-equilibrium states.

Findings

Gold doping enhances excitation efficiency significantly.

Pb doping shows temporary enhancement that fades over time.

Efficiency varies among different electron-glasses regardless of resistance.

Abstract

Electron-glasses can be readily driven far from equilibrium by a variety of means. Several mechanisms to excite the system and their relative merits are reviewed. In this study we focus on the process of exciting electron-glasses by interaction with near infrared radiation. The efficiency of this protocol varies considerably among different electron-glasses, but it only weakly depends on their resistance at liquid helium temperatures. A dramatic enhancement of the excitation efficiency is observed upon doping crystalline indium-oxide with Au. Some enhancement is observed also in samples doped with Pb but this enhancement fades away with time unlike the situation in the Au-doped samples. Several structural and analytical tools are used to characterize the changes in the materials that may be responsible for these effects. Possible routes by which high-frequency electromagnetic fields take the system far from equilibrium are discussed.