Nonequilibrium Current in the One Dimensional Hubbard Model at Half-Filling

TL;DR

This paper investigates nonlinear electrical transport in the one-dimensional Hubbard model at half-filling under finite bias, revealing dielectric breakdown, current scaling behavior, and conductance properties depending on interaction type.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed numerical analysis of nonequilibrium steady states in the 1D Hubbard model under bias using adaptive time-dependent DMRG.

Findings

Dielectric breakdown occurs when bias exceeds the charge gap.

Current-voltage characteristics scale with the charge gap and show near-linear dependence.

Attractive interactions yield perfect linear conductance of 2e^2/h, consistent with Luttinger liquid theory.

Abstract

Nonlinear transport in the one dimensional Hubbard model at half-filling under a finite bias voltage is investigated by the adaptive time-dependent density matrix renormalization group method. For repulsive on-site interaction, dielectric breakdown of the Mott insulating ground state to a current-carrying nonequilibrium steady state is clearly observed when the voltage exceeds the charge gap. It is found that by increasing the voltage further the current-voltage characteristics are scaled only by the charge gap and the scaling curve exhibits almost linear dependence on the voltage whose slope is suppressed by the electron correlation. In the case of attractive interaction the linear conductance is the perfect one $2e^2/h$ which agrees with the prediction by the Luttinger liquid theory.