2007/12/31 by Naoyuki Sugimoto, Shigeki Onoda, Naoto Nagaosa
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #cond-mat.other #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.78.155104
5 pages, 3 figures. A study on the metal-insulator transition in correlated insulators was added
arxiv created 2008/05/30 · openalex publication_date 2008/10/06 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the nonequilibrium switching phenomenon associated with the metal-insulator transition under electric field E in correlated insulators by a gauge-covariant Keldysh formalism. Due to the feedback effect of the resistive current I, this occurs as a first-order transition with a hysteresis of I\text\ensuremath-V characteristics having a lower threshold electric field (\ensuremath∼104 V cm^\ensuremath-1) much weaker than that for the Zener breakdown. It is also found that the localized midgap states introduced by impurities and defects act as hot spots across which the resonant tunneling occurs selectively, which leads to the conductive filamentary paths and reduces the energy cost of the switching function.