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# A Numerical Study of Transport and Shot Noise at 2D Hopping

## 1 Introduction

The theory of hopping transport in disordered conductors  at negligible Coulomb interaction is often perceived a well-established (if not completed) field, with recent research focused mostly on Coulomb effects. However, only relatively recently it was recognized that shot noise (see, e.g., Ref. ) is a very important characteristic of electron transport. In particular, the suppression of the current fluctuation density $`S_I(f)`$ at low frequencies, relative to its Schottky formula value $`2eI`$ (where $`I`$ is the dc current), is a necessary condition  for the so-called quasi-continuous (“sub-electron”) charge transfer in such finite-current experiments as single-electron oscillations .

Earlier calculations of shot noise at hopping through very short samples (e.g., across thin films ) and simple lattice models of long conductors in 1D  and 2D  have shown that such suppression may, indeed, take place. However, calculations for the more realistic case of disordered 2D conductors have been limited to just one particular value of electric field . It seemed important to examine whether the law governing this suppression is really as general as it seemed. Such examination, carried out in this work, has become practical only after the development of a new, advanced method of spectral density calculation  in combination with the use of modern supercomputers. (The work reported below took close to a million processor-hours of CPU time.)

As a useful by-product of this effort, we have obtained accurate quantitative characterization of not only the dependence of the average current on both temperature $`T`$ and electric field $`E`$, but also the statistics of localized site occupation and hop lengths, which give a useful additional insight into the physics of hopping transport.

## 2 Model

We have studied hopping in 2D rectangular ($`L\times W`$) samples with “open” boundary conditions on the interface with well-conducting electrodes  \- see inset in Fig. 1. In the present study, we have concentrated on broad samples with width $`WL_c`$, where $`L_c`$ is the effective percolation cluster size (see below). The conductor is assumed to be “fully frustrated”: the localized sites are randomly distributed over the sample area, and the corresponding electron eigenenergies $`\epsilon _j^{\left(0\right)}`$ are randomly distributed over a sufficiently broad energy band, so that the 2D density of states $`\nu _0`$ is constant at all energies relevant for conduction. Electrons can hop from any site $`j`$ to any other site $`k`$ with the rate

$$\gamma _{jk}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{jk}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{r_{jk}}{a}\right),$$
(1)
where $`r_{jk}\sqrt{\left(x_jx_k\right)^2+\left(y_jy_k\right)^2}`$ is the site separation distance, and $`a`$ is the localization radius . Such exponential dependence on the hop length has been assumed in virtually all theoretical studies of hopping. (The corrections to this law due to phase interference effects  are typically small.) However, in contrast to most other authors, we take Eq. (1) literally even at small distances $`r_{jk}a`$; this range is important only at very high fields and/or temperatures where the average value of $`r_{jk}`$ becomes comparable to $`a`$. Of course our quantitative results for this particular region are only true for the localized states with exponential wavefunction decay.

Another distinction from some other works in this field is that we assume that the hopping rate amplitude $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{jk}`$ depends continuously on the localized site energy difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }U_{jk}\epsilon _j^{\left(0\right)}\epsilon _k^{\left(0\right)}+e\mathrm{𝐄𝐫}_{\mathrm{𝐣𝐤}}`$:

$$\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{jk}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }U_{jk}\right)=g\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }U_{jk}}{1\mathrm{exp}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }U_{jk}/k_BT\right)}.$$
(2)
This model coincides, for low phonon energies $`\mathrm{\Delta }U_{jk}`$, with that described by Eqs. (4.2.17)-(4.2.19) of Ref.  for hopping in lightly-doped semiconductors, and of course satisfies the Gibbs detailed balance requirement $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{jk}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{kj}\mathrm{exp}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }U_{jk}/k_BT\right)`$. It is also close, but more physical than the “Metropolis” dependence which has a cusp at $`\mathrm{\Delta }U_{jk}=0`$.

The interaction of hopping electrons is assumed negligible (with the exception of their implicit on-site interaction which forbids hopping into already occupied localized states). This assumption is well-justified for practically important materials, in particular very thin films of amorphous silicon, which is the major candidate material for the implementation of sub-electron charge transfer components in single-electronic circuits . Indeed, the relative strength of the Coulomb interaction may be characterized by a dimensionless parameter $`\chi (e^2/\kappa a)\times (\nu _0a^2)`$, where $`\kappa `$ is the relative dielectric constant . For a film of thickness $`ta`$, $`\nu _0`$ may be estimated as $`t\nu `$, where $`\nu `$ is the 3D density of states. For undoped amorphous Si, $`\nu `$ is of the order of 1016 eV-1cm-3, and only special treatments may increase it to $``$1020 eV-1cm-3 \- see, e.g., Ref. . As a result, for $`\kappa 10`$ and $`a3`$nm (both numbers are typical for the midgap states in Si), $`\chi `$ is much less than unity for the entire range of $`\nu `$ cited above, so that there is a broad range ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\left(\mathrm{ln}T\right),\mathrm{\Delta }\left(\mathrm{ln}E\right)3\mathrm{ln}\left(\chi ^1\right)`$) of temperature $`T`$ and electric field $`E`$ where the Coulomb interaction is negligible .

With this assumption, our model has only three energy scales: $`k_BT`$, $`eEa`$, and $`\left(\nu _0a^2\right)^1`$. In other words, there are two characteristic values of electric field:

$$E_T\frac{k_BT}{ea}\text{and}E_0\frac{1}{e\nu _0a^3}.$$
(3)
We will be mostly interested in the case of low temperatures $`T<T_0`$, where

$$T_0\frac{1}{k_B\nu _0a^2}$$
(4)
is the field-independent scale of temperature, so that the field scales are related as $`E_T<E_0`$. (The only role of the dimensionless parameter $`g`$ introduced by Eq. (2) is to give the scale of hopping conductivity $`\sigma _0g(e^2/\mathrm{})`$. Coherent quantum effects leading to weak localization and metal-to-insulator transition are negligibly small, and hence the formulated hopping model is adequate, only if $`g1`$.)

The dynamic Monte Carlo calculations were carried out using the algorithm suggested by Bakhvalov et al. , which has become the de facto standard for the simulation of incoherent single-electron tunneling . All calculated variables were averaged over the sample, and in most cases, over several (many) samples with independent random distributions of localized sites in space and energy, but with the same dimensionless parameters $`L/a`$, $`W/a`$, $`T/T_0`$, and $`E/E_0`$. We have used a new, advanced technique  of the noise (current spectral density) calculation to save simulation time. The used supercomputer facilities are listed in the Acknowledgments section below.

## 3 DC Current

In order to understand the relation between our model and the prior results in this field, we have started from the calculation of dc current $`I`$ as a function of $`T`$ and $`E`$. If the electric field is sufficiently small ($`EE_T`$), then the current is proportional to $`E`$, and the transport is completely characterized by the linear conductivity $`\sigma I/WE`$. Fig. 1 shows the calculated conductivity as a function of temperature $`T`$. In the region $`TT_0`$ this dependence follows the exponential $`T`$ dependence of the 2D Mott law

$$\frac{\sigma }{\sigma _0}A(T,0)\mathrm{exp}\left[\left(B(T,0)\frac{T_0}{T}\right)^{1/3}\right],$$
(5)
where $`A(T,E)`$ and $`B(T,E)`$ are dimensionless, model-dependent slow functions of their arguments. We have found that our results may be well fit by Eq. (5) with the following pre-exponential function: $`A(T,0)=\left(23.4\pm 1.4\right)\left(T/T_0\right)^{\left(0.68\pm 0.04\right)}`$, and constant $`B(T,0)=2.0\pm 0.2`$ . This latter result may be compared with the following values reported in the literature. In Ref. , $`B`$ was analytically estimated to be close to 2.1. A different value, $`3.45\pm 0.2`$ has been found by mapping a random 2D hopping problem to the problem of percolation in a system of linked spheres . Finally, a close value $`3.25`$ (with no uncertainty reported) has been obtained using numerical simulations of hopping on a periodic lattice, with a slightly different model for the function $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{\Delta }U)`$ . The difference between our result and the two last values is probably due to the differences between details of the used models.

At higher electric fields ($`EE_T`$), dc current starts to grow faster than the Ohm law, so that if we still keep the above definition of conductivity $`\sigma `$, it starts to grow with $`E`$ (Fig. 2). At $`T0`$, the results are well-described by the expression

$$\frac{\sigma }{\sigma _0}A(0,E)\mathrm{exp}\left[\left(B(0,E)\frac{E_0}{E}\right)^{1/3}\right].$$
(6)
The data for not very high fields $`\left(E_TEE_0\right)`$ may be well fit by Eq. (6) with constant $`B(0,E)=0.65\pm 0.02`$ and pre-exponential function $`A(0,E)=\left(9.2\pm 0.6\right)\left(E/E_0\right)^{\left(0.80\pm 0.02\right)}`$. (Note that the value $`B(0,E)=1.27`$ given in Ref.  corresponds to a different pre-exponential function used for fitting.)

Finally, Fig. 2 shows that when the electric field becomes comparable with the value $`E_0`$ defined by the second of Eqs. (3), dc current and hence, conductivity, start to grow even faster than the exponential $`E`$ dependence of Eq. (6).

## 4 Hopping Statistics

In order to understand the physics of hopping in the three field regions better, it is useful to have a look at the statistics of localized site occupation and hopping length. We have found that for all studied values of $`E`$ and $`T`$, the probability of site occupation closely follows the Fermi distribution with the local Fermi level

$$\mu (𝐫)=\mu _Le\mathrm{𝐄𝐫}$$
(7)
(where $`\mu _L`$ is the Fermi level of the source electrode) and some effective temperature $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$. Points in Fig. 3 show $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ as a function of electric field $`E`$ for several values of physical temperature $`T`$. Dashed lines show the result of the best fitting of the naive single-particle master equation

$`{\displaystyle \frac{f(ϵ,t)}{t}}=`$ $`{\displaystyle }d^2r{\displaystyle }dϵ^{}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{r}{a}}\right)\{\mathrm{\Gamma }(ϵϵ^{}+e\mathrm{𝐄𝐫})f\left(ϵ\right)[1f\left(ϵ^{}\right)]`$ (8)
$`+\mathrm{\Gamma }(ϵ^{}ϵe\mathrm{𝐄𝐫})f\left(ϵ^{}\right)[1f\left(ϵ\right)]\}`$
by a stationary Fermi distribution. Equation (8) would follow from our model if electron correlation (in particular, percolation) effects were not substantial. In reality, we can expect the results following from Eq. (8) to be valid only in certain limits . For example, in the low field limit with $`E0`$, both methods give $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}=T`$. At higher fields the effective temperature grows with the applied field, which “overheats” the electrons. At very high fields ($`E/E_00.3`$) both methods agree again and give

$$k_BT_{\mathrm{eff}}CeEa,C=0.71\pm 0.02.$$
(9)
(A similar result, but with $`C1.34`$, for our definition of $`a`$, was obtained by Marianer and Shklovskii  for a rather different model with an exponential energy dependence of the density of states $`\nu _0`$.) However, at intermediate fields typical of “high-field” variable-range hopping ($`E_TEE_0`$), the master equation still gives the same result (9) and hence fails to appreciate that in fact $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is proportional to $`E^{2/3}`$ . In order to explain this result, let us discuss the statistics of hop lengths (Figs. 4 and 5).

The two- and one-dimensional histograms in Fig. 4 show the probability density $`P`$ of a hop between two sites separated by the vector $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝐫`$, and also the density $`P_d`$ weighed by the factor $`\left|H_{jk}H_{kj}\right|`$, where each $`H`$ is the total number of hops (during a certain time interval) in the indicated direction, i.e $`jkjk`$. The latter weighing emphasizes the site pairs $`(j,k)`$ contributing substantially to the net hopping transport, in comparison with “blinking” pairs which exchange an electron many times before allowing it to advance along the field. It is clear that at relatively high temperatures or low fields ($`EE_T`$) the non-weighed distribution should be symmetric (Fig. 4a). Figure 4d shows that in this case the one-dimensional probability density is well approximated by the Rayleigh distribution, $`P\left(r\right)r\mathrm{exp}\left(r/a_{\mathrm{eff}}\right)`$, with $`a_{\mathrm{eff}}a`$. However, the weighed hop distribution is strongly asymmetric even in the limit $`E0`$ (Fig. 4b). This asymmetry is even more evident at low temperatures or high fields ($`EE_T`$); in this case the distribution has a sharp boundary (Fig. 4c). Figure 4d shows those cases where the 1D histograms deviate substantially from the distribution predicted by the master equation - see the first of Eqs. (16).

Figure 5 shows the r.m.s. non-weighed $`\left(r_{\mathrm{rms}}\right)`$ and direction-weighed $`\left(r_{\mathrm{rmds}}\right)`$ hop lengths, defined, respectively, as

$$r_{\mathrm{rms}}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\frac{_{j,k}r_{jk}^2\left(H_{jk}+H_{kj}\right)}{_{j,k}\left(H_{jk}+H_{kj}\right)}$$
(10)
and

$$r_{\mathrm{rmds}}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\frac{_{j,k}r_{jk}^2\left|H_{jk}H_{kj}\right|}{_{j,k}\left|H_{jk}H_{kj}\right|}$$
(11)
(that are of course just the averages of the histograms shown in Fig. 4), as functions of applied electric field for several values of temperature. At $`T0`$, hopping is strictly one-directional (i.e., if $`H_{jk}0`$, then $`H_{kj}=0`$), so that $`r_{\mathrm{rms}}`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{rmds}}`$ are equal. In fact, simulation shows that in this limit both lengths coincide, at lower fields following the scaling

$$r_{\mathrm{rms}}=r_{\mathrm{rmds}}=Da\left(\frac{E_0}{E}\right)^{1/3},E_TEE_0,$$
(12)
with $`D=0.72\pm 0.01`$. (We are not aware of any prior results with which this value could be compared.)

This scaling of $`r`$ in the variable-range hopping region is essentially the reason for the scaling of $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ mentioned above; in fact, the hopping electron gas “overheating” may be estimated by equating $`k_BT_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ to the energy gain $`e\mathrm{𝐄𝐫}_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐦𝐝𝐬}}`$, possibly multiplied by a constant of the order of one. For the effective temperature, this estimate gives

$$k_BT_{\mathrm{eff}}=const\times e\mathrm{𝐄𝐫}_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐦𝐝𝐬}}=GeaE_0^{1/3}E^{2/3}=G\frac{\left(E/E_0\right)^{2/3}}{\nu _0a^2},$$
(13)
in accordance with the result shown in Fig. 3. Our Monte Carlo simulations give $`G=0.60\pm 0.02`$; we are not aware of any previous results with which this number could be compared.

At higher fields $`\left(E0.1E_0\right)`$ the hop lengths start to decrease slower, approaching a few localization lengths $`a`$ (Fig. 5a). In this (“ultra-high-field”) region, the energy range $`eEa`$ for tunneling at distances of a few $`a`$ is so high that there are always some accessible empty sites within this range, so that long hops, so dominant at variable-range hopping, do not contribute much into conduction.

At finite temperatures, the most curious result is a non-monotonic dependence of the r.m.s. hopping length on the applied field - see Fig. 5a. At $`E0`$, $`r_{\mathrm{rms}}`$ has to be field-independent, and there is no scale for it besides $`a`$. (As evident as it may seem, this fact is sometimes missed in popular descriptions of hopping.) In order to make a crude estimate of $`r_{\mathrm{rms}}`$ in this limit, one can use the master equation (8). In this approach, at thermal equilibrium (i.e. at $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ independent of $`r`$), the hop length probability density $`P\left(r\right)`$ can be found as

$`P\left(r\right)`$ $`=`$ $`2\pi r{\displaystyle }dϵ{\displaystyle }dϵ^{}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{r}{a}}\right)\{\mathrm{\Gamma }(ϵϵ^{})f\left(ϵ\right)[1f\left(ϵ^{}\right)]`$ (14)
$`+\mathrm{\Gamma }(ϵ^{}ϵ)f\left(ϵ^{}\right)[1f\left(ϵ\right)]\}`$
$``$ $`r\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{r}{a}}\right),`$
in a good agreement with the results shown in Fig. 4d for this case. From Eq. (14), we get

$$r_{\mathrm{rms}}r^2^{1/2}=\left[\frac{P\left(r\right)r^2𝑑r}{P\left(r\right)𝑑r}\right]^{1/2}=\sqrt{6}a2.45a,$$
(15)
in a good agreement with numerical data shown in Fig. 5.

A similar calculation for $`r_{\mathrm{rmds}}`$ may be obtained by expanding the tunneling rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(ϵϵ^{}+e\mathrm{𝐄𝐫})`$ in small electric field as $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(ϵϵ^{})+e\mathrm{𝐄𝐫}\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}(ϵϵ^{})`$. The result is

$`P_d\left(r\right)`$ $`=`$ $`eEr^2{\displaystyle 𝑑\varphi \left|cos\varphi \right|𝑑ϵ𝑑ϵ^{}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{r}{a}\right)}`$
$`\times \left\{\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\left(ϵ^{}ϵ\right)f\left(ϵ^{}\right)\left[1f\left(ϵ\right)\right]+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\left(ϵϵ^{}\right)f\left(ϵ\right)\left[1f\left(ϵ^{}\right)\right]\right\},`$
$`P_d\left(r\right)`$ $``$ $`r^2\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{r}{a}}\right),`$
$`r_{\mathrm{rmds}}`$ $``$ $`\left[{\displaystyle \frac{P_d\left(r\right)r^2𝑑r}{P_d\left(r\right)𝑑r}}\right]^{1/2}=\sqrt{12}a3.46a.`$ (16)
The Monte Carlo data (Fig. 5), however, differ from this result , showing that at $`E0`$, $`r_{\mathrm{rmds}}`$ obeys the Mott law

$$r_{\mathrm{rmds}}=Ha\left(\frac{T_0}{T}\right)^{1/3}+Ia,TT_0,$$
(17)
with the best-fit values $`H=0.52\pm 0.05`$ and $`I=2.0\pm 0.1`$. In contrast, the function $`r_{\mathrm{rms}}\left(T\right)`$ is rather far from Eq. (17), because the Mott law refers to long hops responsible for transport (with the average approximately corresponding to $`r_{\mathrm{rmds}}`$), while $`r_{\mathrm{rms}}`$ reflects the statistics of all hops.

## 5 Shot Noise

The current noise simulation has been limited to the case of zero temperature for two reasons. First, in the opposite limit $`\left(E_TE\right)`$ current noise obeys the fluctuation-dissipation theorem; as a result, its low-frequency intensity can be found from $`\sigma (T)`$, and hence does not provide any new information. Second, the calculation of the spectral density $`S_I\left(f\right)`$ of current fluctuations with acceptable accuracy requires much larger statistical ensemble of random samples than that of the average current, which means it becomes increasingly difficult to extend it to finite temperatures even with the advanced averaging algorithm and substantial supercomputer resources used in this work.

Figure 6 shows a typical dependence of the current noise spectral density $`S_I`$, normalized to the Schottky value $`2eI`$, on the observation frequency $`\omega 2\pi f`$. One can see a crossover from a low-frequency plateau to another plateau at high frequencies. As the sample length grows, the crossover becomes extended, i.e. features a broad intermediate range $`\omega _l\omega \omega _h`$, just like in 1D systems with next-site hopping . The position of the high-frequency end $`\omega _h`$ of this region can be estimated in the following way.

In all single-electron tunneling systems, the high-frequency plateau is reached at frequency $`\omega _h`$ close to the rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ of the fastest electron hops affecting the total current . (For example, in systems described by the “orthodox” theory of single-electron tunneling, $`\omega _h\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{max}}\mathrm{\Delta }U_{\mathrm{max}}/e^2R1/RC`$, where $`R`$ and $`C`$ are, respectively, resistance and capacitance of a single junction .) In our current case, this means that $`\omega _h(\mathrm{\Gamma }_{jk})_{\mathrm{max}}(g/\mathrm{})[\mathrm{\Delta }U_{jk}\mathrm{exp}(r_{jk}/a)]_{\mathrm{max}}`$. For this estimate, $`\mathrm{\Delta }U_{jk}`$ can be taken as $`k_BT_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ from Fig. 3, while according to the histograms shown in Fig. 4(d), the length of shortest hops, still giving a noticeable contribution to the current, can be estimated as $`r_{\mathrm{rmds}}/2`$. For the case shown in Fig. 6 ($`E/E_0=8.75\times 10^3`$), these estimates yield $`\mathrm{\Delta }U_{jk}/k_BT_02\times 10^2`$, $`(r_{jk})_{\mathrm{min}}/a2.5`$, giving finally $`\omega _h/\omega _01.5\times 10^3`$, in a very reasonable agreement with numerical results shown in Fig. 6. (Note that this simple estimate, giving a length-independent value for $`\omega _h`$, is only valid for relatively long and broad samples.)

At $`\omega 0`$, a crossover to $`1/f`$ noise might be expected, because the discussion of this effect in some earlier publications  was apparently independent of the Coulomb interaction between hopping electrons. However, within the accuracy of our simulations, we could not find any trace of $`1/f`$-type noise for any parameters we have explored. This fact may not be very surprising, because all the discussions of the $`1/f`$ noise we are aware of require the presence of thermal fluctuations which are absent in our case ($`T=0`$).

Since the low-frequency spectral density is flat, at $`T=0`$ it may be considered as shot noise  and characterized by the Fano factor

$$F\frac{S_I\left(f0\right)}{2eI}.$$
(18)
Similarly, in order to characterize the flat high-frequency spectral density, we may use the parameter

$$F_{\mathrm{}}\frac{S_I\left(f\mathrm{}\right)}{2eI}.$$
(19)
Figure 7(a) shows the average Fano factors $`F`$ and $`F_{\mathrm{}}`$ as a function of $`L`$ for several values of the applied electric field, while Fig. 7(b) shows that the same data can be collapsed on universal curves by the introduction of certain length scales: $`L_c`$ for $`F`$ and $`L_h`$ for $`F_{\mathrm{}}`$.

For the high frequency case,

$$F_{\mathrm{}}=\left(\frac{L_h}{L}\right)^\beta ,LL_h,$$
(20)
where, within the accuracy of our calculations, $`\beta =1`$. Such dependence could be expected, because the high-frequency noise at hopping can be interpreted as a result of the “capacitive division” of the discrete increments of externally-measured charge jumps resulting from single-electron hops through the system . When applied to uniform (ordered) systems, these arguments always give the result $`F_{\mathrm{}}1/N_h`$ with $`N_h=L/d`$ being the number of electron hops ($`d`$ the hopping length along the current flow) necessary to pass an electron through the system, regardless of hop rates . For $`T0`$ in the case of disordered conductors, $`L_h`$ in Eq. (20) may then be interpreted as the average hop length along current flow. This interpretation turns out to be correct. Indeed, Fig. 8 shows that the parameter $`L_h`$ obtained from Eq. (20) scales with the electric field in a manner similar to $`x_{\mathrm{rmds}}`$, especially at low fields, where it follows the variable-range hopping dependence of Eq. (12).

The low-frequency value $`F`$, in the limit ($`LL_c`$), is weakly dependent on length and approaches $`F0.7`$, which not surprisingly is consistent with the prior results for hopping via 1 intermediate site  ($`F=0.75`$) and 2 such sites  ($`F=0.707`$). The results for long samples are much more interesting. We have found that they may be reasonably well fit with a universal dependence

$$F=\left(\frac{L_c}{L}\right)^\alpha ,LL_c.$$
(21)
Here $`\alpha `$ is a numerical exponent; in the current study we could establish that

$$\alpha =0.76\pm 0.08.$$
(22)
Equation (21) and the value for $`\alpha `$ are compatible with our previous results  $`\alpha =0.85\pm 0.07`$ (for the same model, but just one particular value of $`E`$) and $`\alpha =0.85\pm 0.02`$ (for nearest neighbor hopping on uniform slanted lattices).

Figure 8 shows the fitting parameter $`L_c`$ as a function of electric field $`E`$. In the variable-range hopping region, it may be fitted with the following law,

$$L_c=Ja\left(\frac{E_0}{E}\right)^\mu ,J=0.04\pm 0.01,\mu =0.98\pm 0.08.$$
(23)
This law may be compared with the result of the following arguments. According to the arguments given in Ref. , parameter $`L_c`$ may be interpreted as the average percolation cluster length (up to a constant of the order of $`1`$). The theory of directed percolation  gives the following scaling:

$$L_cx\left(\frac{x_c}{\left|xx_c\right|}\right)^\delta _{}.$$
(24)
Here $`x`$ is the r.m.d.s. hop length along the field direction, while $`x_c`$ is its critical value. According to Ref. , the critical index $`\delta _{}`$ should be close to $`1.73`$. Due to the exponential nature of the percolation, $`\left|xx_c\right|a`$, while $`x`$ should follow a field scaling similar to that given by Eq. (12). (Square points in Fig. 8 show that this is true for our simulation results as well.) Thus for sufficiently large $`x`$ we arrive at Eq. (23) with $`\mu =\frac{1}{3}\left(1+\delta _{}\right)0.911`$. Equation (24) shows that this value is quite compatible with our numerical result, thus confirming the interpretation of $`L_c`$ as the average percolation cluster length.

Note that in the variable-range hopping regime, $`L_c`$ has a different field dependence and is much larger than the average hop length. However, as the applied electric field approaches $`E_0`$, both lengths become comparable with each other and with the localization radius $`a`$.

## 6 Discussion

To summarize, our results for average conductivity and hop statistics are in agreement with the well-known semi-quantitative picture of hopping, including the usual variable-range hopping at low fields $`\left(EE_T\right)`$ and “high-field” variable-range hopping at $`E_TEE_0`$. However, our supercomputer-based simulation has allowed, for the first time, a high-precision quantitative characterization of hopping, for a particular but very natural model. Moreover, our model also describes the “ultra-high field” region $`\left(EE_0\right)`$ where the variable-range hopping picture is no longer valid, since from most localized sites an electron can hop, with comparable probability, to several close sites. (In the last region, there are no clearly defined percolation clusters; rather, electrons follow a large number of interwoven trajectories.)

Our simulations of shot noise at 2D hopping have confirmed our earlier hypothesis  that in the absence of substantial Coulomb interaction, in sufficiently large samples $`\left(L,WL_c\right)`$ the Fano factor $`F`$ scales approximately proportionally to $`1/L`$ \- see Eq. (21). Other confirmations of this hypothesis have come from recent experiments with lateral transport in SiGe quantum wells  and GaAs MESFET channels . Unfortunately, these experiments are not precise enough to distinguish the small difference between the exponent $`\alpha `$ in Eq. (21) and unity.

The hypothesis that $`\alpha `$ is in fact equal to 1 for sufficiently long samples seems appealing, because it would mean the simple addition of mutually-independent noise voltages generated by sample sections connected in series. On the contrary, a deviation of $`\alpha `$ from unity would mean that some dynamic correlations of electron motion persist even at $`LL_c`$. For 1D hopping this fact is well established: in at least one exactly solvable model (the “asymmetric single exclusion process”, or ASEP ) the dynamic correlations may change $`\alpha `$ from 1 to 0.5. However, for 2D conductors the fact that the correlation length (if any) may be substantially larger than the percolation cluster length comes as a surprise .

From the point of view of possible applications in single-electron devices , the fact that $`F`$ may be suppressed to values much less than unity is generally encouraging, since it enables the use of circuit components with quasi-continuous charge transport. However, in order to achieve the high-quality quasi-continuous transfer (say, $`F0.1`$), the sample length $`L`$ has to be at least an order of magnitude longer than the percolation cluster length scale $`L_c`$. On the other hand, $`L_c`$ itself, especially in the most interesting case of low applied fields, is substantially longer than the localization length $`a`$ (Fig. 8), which is of the order of a few nanometers in most prospective materials, e.g., amorphous silicon. Hence, it may be hard to implement sub-electron transport in conductors substantially shorter than $``$100 nm. This size is quite acceptable for experiments at low temperatures (say, below 1 K), but is too large for the most important case of room-temperature single-electron circuits , because of large stray capacitance of the hopping conductor, which effectively sums up with the capacitance of the island to be serviced.

Fruitful discussions with A. Efros, V. Kozub, M. Pollak, B. Shklovskii and D. Tsigankov are gratefully acknowledged. The work was supported in part by the Engineering Physics Program of the Office of Basic Energy Sciences at the U.S. Department of Energy. We also acknowledge the use of the following supercomputer resources: our group’s’s cluster $`Njal`$ (purchase and installation funded by DoD’s DURIP program via AFOSR), Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s IBM SP computer $`Eagle`$ (funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and Energy Efficiency program), and also IBM SP system $`Tempest`$ at Maui High Performance Computing Center and IBM SP system $`Habu`$ at NAVO Shared Resource Center. Computer time on the two last machines has been granted by DOD’s High Performance Computing Modernization Program.

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