Semiconductor transport evidence for localization (source code)

= Semiconductor transport evidence for localization

<Nevill Francis Mott>'s 1977 lecture discusses <silicon> deposited in a glow discharge. Injected <Electrons> provided a drift-mobility readout; <electrical conductivity> and <temperature> dependence tested localized-state transport and excitation toward a <mobility edge>. Varying <temperature> distinguishes transport regimes. The lecture gives no contact geometry or timing circuit here, so none is inferred. Its Figure 2 is schematic, not measured data.<Electrons in Glass by Nevill Francis Mott>[Electrons in Glass, pp.404–406, Fig.2 and discussion of glow-discharge-deposited silicon; inspected institutional mirror https://www.nevis.columbia.edu/~haas/documents/physics_nobel_lectures/physics71-80-2.pdf]{ref}

This evidence motivates a transport question beyond the closed-chain <eigenvalue problem>: how does a prepared charge disturbance move under the conditions of a real sample? The numerical figures above supply neither drift-mobility measurements nor a model of the deposition process. Finite-size concentration alone cannot reproduce an experimental <electrical conductivity> curve.

Finite <temperature> permits <phonon>-assisted hopping between <localized eigenstates> or thermal excitation toward a <mobility edge>; localized states therefore need not imply zero measured <electrical conductivity> at every nonzero <temperature>.<Electrons in Glass by Nevill Francis Mott>[Electrons in Glass, pp.405,407, localized-state hopping and thermal excitation]{ref}

Real <dephasing> destroys the relative <wave phases> needed for long-path <interference>. Observing coherent confinement requires the distance over which those <wave phases> survive to be long enough to explore the localized region, and the sample to be large enough to resolve it. <Temperature> alone is not an automatic switch: the actual inelastic processes set the relevant scales. Static elastic <wave scattering> preserves coherence within each realization. Loss of the ensemble-averaged <coherent field> through random <wave phases> is therefore not, by itself, physical <dephasing> of an individual sample.