  The many-body Monte Carlo method is used to evaluate the frequency dependent
conductivity and the average mobility of a system of hopping charges,
electronic or ionic on a one-dimensional chain or channel of finite length. Two
cases are considered: the chain is connected to electrodes and in the other
case the chain is confined giving zero dc conduction. The concentration of
charge is varied using a gate electrode. At low temperatures and with the
presence of an injection barrier, the mobility is an oscillatory function of
density. This is due to the phenomenon of charge density pinning. Mobility
changes occur due to the co-operative pinning and unpinning of the
distribution. At high temperatures, we find that the electron-electron
interaction reduces the mobility monotonically with density, but perhaps not as
much as one might intuitively expect because the path summation favour the
in-phase contributions to the mobility, i.e. the sequential paths in which the
carriers have to wait for the one in front to exit and so on. The carrier
interactions produce a frequency dependent mobility which is of the same order
as the change in the dc mobility with density, i.e. it is a comparably weak
effect. However, when combined with an injection barrier or intrinsic disorder,
the interactions reduce the free volume and amplify disorder by making it
non-local and this can explain the too early onset of frequency dependence in
the conductivity of some high mobility quasi-one-dimensional organic materials.

Materials Science;Statistical Mechanics