Electron-Assisted Hopping in Two Dimensions

We have studied the non-ohmic effects in the conductivity of a two-dimensional system which undergoes the crossover from weak to strong localization with decreasing electron concentration. When the electrons are removed from equilibrium with phonons, the hopping conductivity depends only on the electron temperature. This indicates that the hopping transport in a system with a large localization length is assisted by electron-electron interactions rather than by the phonons.