Breakdown of a Mott insulator: a nonadiabatic tunneling mechanism.
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.
Oka
Takashi
T
Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Hongo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.
Arita
Ryotaro
R
Aoki
Hideo
H