Abstract
Charge excitations in Mott insulators MIs are distinct from their band-insulator counterparts and they can
provide a mechanism for energy harvesting in solar cells based on strongly correlated electronic materials. In
this paper, we study the real-time dynamics of holon-doublon pairs in an MI connected to metallic leads using
the time-dependent density-matrix renormalization-group method. The transfer of charge across the MI-metal
interface is controlled by both the electron-electron interaction strength within the MI and the voltage difference
between the leads. We find an overall enhancement of the charge transfer as compared to the case of a
noninteracting band insulator-metal interface with a similar band gap. Moreover, the propagation of holondoublon
excitations within the MI dynamically changes the spin-spin correlations, introducing time-dependent
phase shifts in the spin-structure factor.
