"Relaxation processes in Coulomb glasses"
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Coulomb glasses are materials with electron states localized by the disorder
under conditions of long-range interactions between their particles. One
realization of a Coulomb glass is a doped semiconductor at low temperatures.
Another example is granular metals. Coulomb glasses show complex dynamics
typical for other complex systems: sluggish, non-exponential, relaxation of the
conductance as well as aging and memory effects similar to those observed in
structural glasses.  We report dynamical Monte Carlo simulations of relaxation
processes in a Coulomb glass. Both the relaxation to equilibrium following an
initial temperature quench and during and after a driving by a strong current is
studied.  We see that out of equilibrium there is an effective electron
temperature established on a short timescale, and this  relaxes slowly to the
bath temperature. We also study the response of the system to an external
perturbation and observe how it relaxes after such a perturbation.  Both from a
random state and after a perturbation from equilibrium  we find that the
effective temperature relaxes logarithmically.