Research Projects

This project aims to study the equilibrium, nonequilibrium, and transport properties of the Coulomb glass system, a theoretical model used to study insulators with electronic states localized due to disorder. The model is applicable to various materials, including amorphous and compensated semiconductors, granular materials, array of nanocrystals, graphene, and others. The amount of disorder introduced into a system is a tunable quantity, and the project aims to extend the work to intermediate and small disorders for two-dimensional square lattice models. The disorder in the Coulomb glass model can be random site energies or random position of sites. The main goal is to calculate the conductivity of the realistic system, understanding how the density of states behaves under parameters like disorder strength and temperature. Comparing theoretical and simulation results of conductivity in intermediate disorders with experiments will answer the relevance of many-body correlations in the conductivity mechanism. The project also aims to understand how the Coulomb glass systems in intermediate disorders will behave under nonequilibrium situations such as non-ohmic transport, relaxation of an out-of-equilibrium system, and aging. The existence of a glass transition and the physics behind the Coulomb glass model are also addressed. Equilibrium Monte Carlo simulations will be used to study the properties, while conductivity calculations will be carried out using effective medium theories and Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. The non-equilibrium properties will be studied using dynamical matrix approach and Kinetic Monte Carlo simulation. Understanding the role of interaction, disorder, and localization length on transport and nonequilibrium properties is crucial for synthesizing materials tailored for specific applications.