Difference between insulating and conducting states

Abstract

It is proposed to used, as a basic property specifying the difference between an insulator and a conductor, a static phenomenon, namely the field effect which absent in the former, but present in the latter. The absence or present of the field effect is closely associated with the nature of the homogenious linear response to a static electric field. For an insulator, it is finite; for a conductor, it depends on the volume V and tends to infinity when V to infinity. The fluctuation-dissipation theorem makes it possibile to relate the nature of this response to the mean square fluctuation of the dipole moment of the system, which is normal in an insulator, but anomalious in a conductor. A number of examples are considered. A notable property of the BCS supercondctivity state have remarked, namely: its conductivity property is a consequence of non-zero electron density fluctuations in the ground state of the system with ODLRO.