Electrically driven insulator-to-metal transition in a correlated insulator: Electronic mechanism and thermal description

Motivated by the resistive switchings in transition-metal oxides (TMOs) induced a voltage bias, we study far-from-equilibrium dynamics of an electric-field-driven strongly-correlated model featuring first-order insulator-to-metal transition at equilibrium, namely dimer-Hubbard model. We use non-equilibrium implementation dynamical cluster approximation to access steady-state spectral and transport properties. show that electric field can drive both metal-to-insulator transitions. While they proceed quite distinct mechanisms, specifically simple heating metal versus effects correlated charge gap, these transitions be unified single framework once excitations are accounted for terms effective temperature. This conceptual advance brings together two sides long-lasting debate over origins electrically-driven switching TMOs.