Glassy relaxation in the Fukuyama-Lee-Rice model of charge-density waves

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Abstract
A number of phenomena involving metastability, hysteresis, and slow ‘‘glassy’’ relaxation have been observed in sliding–charge-density-wave (CDW) systems. We consider the theoretical behavior expected within a classical model of an elastically deformable CDW pinned by random impurities at a small, but finite temperature. We find that it is important to distinguish between viscous relaxation within a single (metastable) well of the free energy, and processes involving thermal excitation between metastable states. Our results are compared with recent experiments on CDW’s, and also with ‘‘glassy’’ relaxation phenomena in other systems. We offer some pointers and suggestions for future experimental investigation.