# Long-lived circulating currents in strongly correlated nanorings

## TL;DR

This paper investigates the dynamics of currents in strongly correlated nanorings, revealing a regime where circulating currents decay slowly and persist far from equilibrium despite stationary transmitted current.

## Contribution

It uncovers the existence of long-lived circulating currents in nanorings and analyzes their decay rates as a function of interaction strength, highlighting a novel non-equilibrium regime.

## Key findings

- Circulating currents decay at a rate much slower than lead-induced broadening.
- Long-lived ring transients can exist even when transmitted current is stationary.
- Decay rate of circulating currents depends strongly on interaction strength.

## Abstract

We study the time evolving currents flowing in an interacting, ring-shaped nanostructure after a bias voltage has been switched on. The source-to-drain current exhibits the expected relaxation towards its quasi-static equilibrium value at a rate $\Gamma_0$ reflecting the lead-induced broadening of the ring states. In contrast, the current circulating within the ring decays with a different rate $\Gamma$, which is a rapidly decaying function of the interaction strength and thus can take values orders of magnitude below $\Gamma_0$. This implies the existence of a regime in which the nanostructure is far from equilibrium even though the transmitted current is already stationary. We discuss experimental setups to observe the long-lived ring transients.