The response of disordered matter to electromagnetic fields

Abstract

We have studied a variety of different disordered materials, including molecular and ionic liquids, supercooled liquids and glasses, ionic conductors, and doped semiconductors, in ac electromagnetic fields over an exceptional broad dynamic range including the rarely investigated GHz to THz region. We show that all classes of disordered matter exhibit an astonishingly similar response: In addition to Jonscher's time-honored "Universal Dielectric Response", a superlinear power-law increase of the frequency-dependent conductivity shows up bridging the gap between the classical dielectric and the infrared region. We demonstrate that the universal dielectric behavior of disordered matter extends up to much higher frequencies than thought until now and covers the range from ultra-low (mHz) to phonon (THz) frequencies.