CHARGE GLASS IN 2-DIMENSIONAL ARRAYS OF CAPACITIVELY COUPLED GRAINS WITH RANDOM OFFSET CHARGES

We study the effect of random offset charges in the insulator to condu ctor transition in systems of capacitively coupled grains, as realized in two-dimensional arrays of ultrasmall Josephson junctions. In the p resence to disorder, the conductive transition and charge ordering at nonzero gate voltages are both destroyed for any degree of disorder at finite temperatures in the thermodynamic limit, but crossover effects will dominate at finite length scales. The conductance is linear and thermally activated but nonlinear behavior sets in at a crossover volt age which decreases as temperature decreases. For large disorder, the results are supported by Monte Carlo dynamics simulations of a Coulomb gas with offset charges and are consistent with the thermally activat ed behavior found in recent experiments. [S0031-9007(98)07499-7].