Relaxation of a Mott-neuron

TL;DR

This paper extends a model of electric Mott transition by including elastic effects, showing that strong electric pulses can stabilize metastable phases, with implications for neuromorphic circuits.

Contribution

The study introduces an elastic energy term into the EMT model, revealing how electric pulsing stabilizes metastable states, advancing understanding of Mott insulator relaxation.

Findings

Strong electric pulsing stabilizes metastable phases.

Model aligns with experimental observations in AM4Q8 Mott insulators.

Insights support neuromorphic circuit development.

Abstract

We consider the phenomenon of electric Mott transition (EMT), which is an electric induced insulator to metal transition. Experimentally, it is observed that depending on the magnitude of the electric excitation the final state may show a short lived or a long lived resistance change. We extend a previous model for the EMT to include the effect of local structural distortions through an elastic energy term. We find that by strong electric pulsing the induced metastable phase may become further stabilized by the electro-elastic effect. We present a systematic study of the model by numerical simulations and compare the results to new experiments in Mott insulators of the AM4Q8 family. Our work significantly extends the scope of our recently introduced leaky-integrate-and-fire Mott-neuron [P. Stoliar Adv Mat 2017] to bring new insight on the physical mechanism of its relaxation. This is a key feature for future neuromorphic circuit implementations.