Thouless energy

The Thouless energy is a characteristic energy scale of diffusive disordered conductors. It was first introduced by the Scottish-American physicist David J. Thouless when studying Anderson localization,[1] as a measure of the sensitivity of energy levels to a change in the boundary conditions of the system. Though being a classical quantity, it has been shown to play an important role in the quantum-mechanical treatment of disordered systems.[2]

It is defined by

E_{\rm {T}}={\frac {\hbar D}{L^{2}}}

,

where D is the diffusion constant and L the size of the system, and thereby inversely proportional to the diffusion time

t_{D}={\frac {L^{2}}{D}}

through the system.

References

J. T. Edwards and D. J. Thouless, "Numerical studies of localization in disordered systems," J. Phys. C: Solid State Phys. 5, 807 (1972), doi:10.1088/0022-3719/5/8/007.
A. Altland, Y. Gefen, and G. Montambaux, "What is the Thouless Energy for Ballistic Systems?", Physical Review Letters 76, 1130 (1996), doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.76.1130.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[1] J. T. Edwards and D. J. Thouless, "Numerical studies of localization in disordered systems," J. Phys. C: Solid State Phys. 5, 807 (1972), doi:10.1088/0022-3719/5/8/007.

[2] A. Altland, Y. Gefen, and G. Montambaux, "What is the Thouless Energy for Ballistic Systems?", Physical Review Letters 76, 1130 (1996), doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.76.1130.