Phase diagram, correlation gap, and critical properties of the Coulomb glass

Abstract

We investigate the lattice Coulomb glass model in three dimensions via Monte Carlo simulations. No evidence for an equilibrium glass phase is found down to very low temperatures, although the correlation length increases rapidly near T = 0 . A charge-ordered phase exists at low disorder. The transition to this phase is consistent with the random field Ising universality class, which shows that the interaction is effectively screened at moderate temperature. For large disorder, the single-particle density of states near the Coulomb gap satisfies the scaling relation g ( ϵ , T ) = T δ f ( | ϵ | / T ) with δ = 2.01 ± 0.05 in agreement with the prediction of Efros and Shklovskii. For decreasing disorder, a crossover to a larger effective exponent occurs due to the proximity of the charge-ordered phase.