Specific heat of the Coulomb glass

Abstract

The specific heat of the Coulomb glass is studied by numerical simulations. Both the lattice model with various strengths of disorder, and the random-position model are considered for the one- to three-dimensional cases. In order to extend the investigations down to very low temperatures where the many-valley structure of the configuration space is of great importance we use a hybrid-Metropolis procedure. This algorithm bridges the gap between Metropolis simulation and analytical statistical mechanics. The analysis of the simulation results shows that the correlation length of the relevant processes is rather small, and that multi-particle processes yield an essential contribution to the specific heat in all cases except the one-dimensional random-position model.