Power-law temperature dependence of thermally excited transport in one-dimensional systems from Monte Carlo simulation

Abstract

We investigate the temperature dependence of electric conductance in one-dimensional (1D) systems with thermally excited electron transport under various bias voltages by using Monte Carlo simulation based on the variable-rang hopping (VRH) formula. We find that the temperature dependence of the transport can show a power law behavior as a result of summation over a large number of electron traveling paths although the hopping intensity in every step in the VRH formula is exponentially dependent on the temperature. This can well explain the temperature dependence of conductance measured in various experiments on 1D systems. Without taking the interaction between electrons into account, we can also merge most of our data onto one “universal curve” suggested from the Luttinger Liquid theory. This indicates that the phonon assisted hoppings in disordered 1D systems play an important role at finite temperatures and can provide a simple and efficient explanation for the experimentally observed behavior.