Overlap integral between two electron clouds at different sites

Relaxation dynamics in quantum electron glasses

It is experimentally shown that, depending on the carrier concentration of the system n, the dynamics of electron glasses either slows down with increasing temperature or it is independent of it. This also correlates with the dependence of a typical relaxation time (or "viscosity") on n. These linked features are argued to be consistent with a model for dissipative tunneling. The slow relaxation of the electron glass may emerge then as a manifestation of friction in a many-body quantum system. Our considerations may also explain why strongly localized granular metals are likely to show electron-glass effects while semiconductors are not.