Paper addresses "superinsulators"

A paper co-written by scientist Vladimir Kravtsov, head of the ICTP's Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics section, has been published in Physical Review Letters and was selected to appear on that journal's "Physics" website, which highlights exceptional papers from the Physical Review journals.

The paper, titled "Jumps in Current-Voltage Characteristics in Disordered Films", addresses recent experiments that showed an apparent transition from modestly insulating to strongly insulating behaviour as the voltage decreases. The jump in the conductance down by 5 to 6 orders of magnitude led to speculations about a new state of matter ("superinsulator").

In the highlighted paper, an alternative theory is suggested: that giant jumps in the current-voltage characteristics of disordered films could be the first evidence that electron transport in insulators can occur in the absence of phonons. For more details, visit the Physics website.

The paper's co-authors are Boris L. Altshuler and Igor L. Aleiner of Columbia University, and Igor V. Lerner of the University of Birmingham.

ICTP will be hosting a related conference on "Superconductor-Insulator Transitions" from 18 to 23 May.