Penetration of hot electrons through a cold disordered wire

Abstract

We study a penetration of an electron with high energy E<<T through strongly disordered wire of length L<<a (a being the localization length). Such an electron can loose, but not gain the energy, when hopping from one localized state to another. We have found a distribution function for the transmission coefficient t. The typical t remains exponentially small in L/a, but with the decrement, reduced compared to the case of direct elastic tunnelling. The distribution function has a relatively strong tail in the domain of anomalously high t; the average <t>~(a/L)^2 is controlled by rare configurations of disorder, corresponding to this tail.

4 pages, 5 figures