Mott insulator breakdown through pattern formation
  We study the breakdown of a Mott insulator with the thermodynamic imbalance induced by an applied bias voltage. By analyzing the instabilities of the magnetic susceptibility, we describe a rich non-equilibrium phase diagram, obtained for different applied voltages, that exhibits phases with a spatially patterned charge gap. For a finite voltage, smaller than the value of the equilibrium Mott gap, the formation of patterns coincides with the emergence of mid-gap states contributing to a finite steady-state conductance. We discuss the experimental implications of this new scenario of Mott breakdown. 
Pedro Ribeiro, Andrey E. Antipov, Alexey N. Rubtsov
cond-mat.str-el cond-mat.other cond-mat.stat-mech quant-ph