On dispersive energy transport and relaxation in the hopping regime

Abstract

A new method for investigating relaxation phenomena for charge carriers hopping between localized tail states has been developed. It allows us to consider both charge and energy {\it dispersive} transport. The method is based on the idea of quasi-elasticity: the typical energy loss during a hop is much less than all other characteristic energies. We have investigated two models with different density of states energy dependencies with our method. In general, we have found that the motion of a packet in energy space is affected by two competing tendencies. First, there is a packet broadening, i.e. the dispersive energy transport. Second, there is a narrowing of the packet, if the density of states is depleting with decreasing energy. It is the interplay of these two tendencies that determines the overall evolution. If the density of states is constant, only broadening exists. In this case a packet in energy space evolves into Gaussian one, moving with constant drift velocity and mean square deviation increasing linearly in time. If the density of states depletes exponentially with decreasing energy, the motion of the packet tremendously slows down with time. For large times the mean square deviation of the packet becomes constant, so that the motion of the packet is ``soliton-like''.