Breakdown of a Mott insulator -- non-adiabatic 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 Schr\"odinger 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 induces current oscillation for small systems, while give rise to finite resistivity through dissipation for larger systems/on longer time scales.