The effect of interactions and disorder on the relaxation of two-level systems in amorphous solids (1612.08452v2)

Abstract: At low temperatures the dynamical degrees of freedom in amorphous solids are tunnelling two-level systems (TLSs). Concentrating on these degrees of freedom, and taking into account disorder and TLS-TLS interactions, we obtain a "TLS-glass", described by the random field Ising model with random $1/r^3$ interactions. In this paper we perform a self consistent mean field calculation, previously used to study the electron-glass (EG) model [A.~Amir {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. B {\bf 77}, 165207, (2008)]. Similar to the electron-glass, we find $\frac{1}{\lambda}$ distribution of relaxation rates $\lambda$, leading to logarithmic slow relaxation. However, with increased interactions the EG model shows slower dynamics whereas the TLS glass model shows faster dynamics. This suggests that given system specific properties, glass dynamics can be slowed down or sped up by the interactions.