The Long Range Interaction and the Relaxation in Glasses at Low Temperatures

TL;DR

This paper investigates how interactions among two-level systems in glasses influence low-temperature relaxation, especially under external fields, revealing how relaxation rates depend on temperature and field strength.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed model of interaction-stimulated relaxation in amorphous solids, highlighting the impact of external fields on relaxation dynamics at low temperatures.

Findings

Relaxation is significantly accelerated by external measuring fields.

The relaxation rate depends on both temperature and external field strength.

Interaction effects dominate relaxation behavior at low temperatures when phonons are frozen out.

Abstract

We describe the interaction stimulated relaxation in the ensemble of two-level systems, responsible for low temperature kinetics and thermodynamics properties of amorphous solids. This relaxation gets significant at sufficiently low temperature when phonons are substantially frozen out. We show that in the realistic experimental situation the measuring field strongly accelerates the interaction stimulated relaxation. The characteristic temperature and field dependences of the relaxation rate are found when the rate is affected both by the interaction between two level systems and by the external field.