title: Breakdown of a Mott insulator: a nonadiabatic tunneling mechanism.
abstract: Time-dependent nonequilibrium properties of a strongly correlated electron system driven by large electric fields is obtained by means of solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for the many-body wave function numerically in one dimension. While the insulator-to-metal transition depends on the electric field and the interaction, the metallization is found to be described in terms of a universal Landau-Zener quantum tunneling among the many-body levels. These processes induce current oscillation for small systems, while giving rise to finite resistivity through dissipation for larger systems/on longer time scales.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Hongo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Oka
authors.forename: Ryotaro
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Arita
authors.forename: Hideo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Aoki