English

Nonequilibrium thermal state of a voltage-biased Mott insulator

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2022-03-01 v2

Abstract

We establish the nonequilibrium thermal phases of a voltage driven antiferromagnetic Mott insulator in three dimensions, realised at steady state under a voltage bias. Starting from the Keldysh action for the half filled Hubbard model we derive an effective Langevin equation for the `slow' magnetic variables. The coupling of electrons to these degrees of freedom determine the transport properties. At low temperature we find a voltage-driven discontinuous insulator-metal transition, along with hysteresis. We map the suppression of the N\'eel temperature TNT_N and pseudogap temperature TpgT_{pg} with increasing voltage, and discover that the biased Mott insulator has a finite temperature insulator-metal transition. The low temperature results resolve an experimental puzzle about hysteresis, and the thermal results make testable predictions on spectra and nonlinear transport.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.04533,
  title  = {Nonequilibrium thermal state of a voltage-biased Mott insulator},
  author = {Arijit Dutta and Pinaki Majumdar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.04533},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

12 pages, 11 figures. Supplement 5 pages, 1 figure