TY  - JOUR
PB  - SciPost Foundation
DO  - 10.21468/SciPostPhys.19.1.010
TI  - Probing dielectric breakdown in Mott insulators through current oscillations
PY  - 2025/07/07
UR  - https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.19.1.010
JF  - SciPost Physics
JA  - SciPost Phys.
VL  - 19
IS  - 1
SP  - 010
A1  - Triadú-Galí, Joan
AU  - Garcia-Saez, Artur
AU  - Juliá-Díaz, Bruno
AU  - Perez-Obiol, Axel
AB  - We investigate the dielectric breakdown of mesoscopic Mott insulators, a phenomenon where a strong electric field destabilizes the insulating state, resulting in a transition to a metallic phase. Using the Landau-Zener formalism, which models the excitation of a two-level system, we derive a theoretical expression for the threshold value of the field. To validate our predictions, we present an efficient protocol for estimating the charge gap and threshold field via non-equilibrium current oscillations, overcoming the computational limitations of exact diagonalization. Our simulations demonstrate the accuracy of our theoretical formula for systems with small gaps. Moreover, our findings are directly testable in ultracold atomic experiments with ring geometries and artificial gauge fields, as our method uses measurable quantities and relies on already available technologies. This work aims to bridge the gap between theoretical models and experimentally realizable protocols, providing tools to explore non-equilibrium mesoscopic phenomena in strongly correlated quantum systems.
ER  -

@Article{10.21468/SciPostPhys.19.1.010,
	title={{Probing dielectric breakdown in Mott insulators through current oscillations}},
	author={Joan Triadú-Galí and Artur Garcia-Saez and Bruno Juliá-Díaz and Axel Pérez-Obiol},
	journal={SciPost Phys.},
	volume={19},
	pages={010},
	year={2025},
	publisher={SciPost},
	doi={10.21468/SciPostPhys.19.1.010},
	url={https://scipost.org/10.21468/SciPostPhys.19.1.010},
}