Conductance statistics in small GaAs:Si wires at low temperatures. I. Theoretical analysis: truncated quantum fluctuations in insulating wires

We analyse in detail Mott's variable range hopping in one dimension, expanding on earlier work by Raikh and Ruzin. We show that the large conductance fluctuations in disordered insulators result from a subtle interplay between purely quantum phenomena and geometrical fluctuations arising from the energies and locations of the impurities. Our results compare very well with both experiments and numerical simulations.