Nonlinear Transport in One-Dimensional Mott Insulator in Strong Electric Fields

TL;DR

This paper investigates the nonlinear electrical response of a one-dimensional Mott insulator under strong electric fields, revealing many-body tunneling effects and energy localization phenomena through numerical solutions of the Schrödinger equation.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed numerical analysis of nonlinear transport in a strongly correlated 1D Mott insulator under high electric fields, highlighting many-body Landau-Zener tunneling and energy saturation effects.

Findings

Observation of many-body Landau-Zener tunneling at energy level anti-crossings.

Identification of energy saturation indicating dynamical localization.

Demonstration of nonlinear I-V characteristics in the system.

Abstract

Time-dependent Schroedinger's equation is integrated for a one-dimensional strongly-correlated electron system driven by large electric fields. For larger electric fields, many-body Landau-Zener tunneling takes place at anti-crossings of the many-body energy levels. The nonlinear $I$-$V$ characteristics as well as the time dependence of the energy expectation value are obtained. The energy of the Mott insulator in electric fields shows a saturation, which suggests a dynamical localization in energy space of many-body wave functions.