Field-induced structural aging in glasses at ultra low temperatures

Abstract

In non-equilibrium experiments on the glasses Mylar and BK7, we measured the excess dielectric response after the temporary application of a strong electric bias field at mK--temperatures. A model recently developed describes the observed long time decays qualitatively for Mylar [PRL 90, 105501, S. Ludwig, P. Nalbach, D. Rosenberg, D. Osheroff], but fails for BK7. In contrast, our results on both samples can be described by including an additional mechanism to the mentioned model with temperature independent decay times of the excess dielectric response. As the origin of this novel process beyond the "tunneling model" we suggest bias field induced structural rearrangements of "tunneling states" that decay by quantum mechanical tunneling.