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Updated: Oct 9, 2025

High Resolution Phonon-assisted Quasi-resonance Fluorescence Spectroscopy
Published on: June 28, 2016
Electron-phonon decoupling in two dimensions
George McArdle1, Igor V Lerner2
1School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, Birmingham, UK.
Abstract:
In order to observe many-body localisation in electronic systems, decoupling from the lattice phonons is required, which is possible only in out-of-equilibrium systems. We show that such an electron-phonon decoupling may happen in suspended films and it manifests itself via a bistability in the electron temperature. By studying the electron-phonon cooling rate in disordered, suspended films with two-dimensional phonons, we derive the conditions needed for such a bistability, which can be observed experimentally through hysteretic jumps of several orders of magnitude in the nonlinear current-voltage characteristics. We demonstrate that such a regime is achievable in systems with an Arrhenius form of the equilibrium conductivity, while practically unreachable in materials with Mott or Efros-Shklovskii hopping.
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