Persistent currents in an interacting 1D disordered ring: Manifestations of the Mott-Hubbard transition

We present an exact calculation of the persistent current in interacting disordered 1D rings. This system exhibits a variety of interesting behaviors depending on the disorder and the strength of electron-electron interactions. We find that even for the disordered case the current at high values of interactions is strongly suppressed due to the Mott-Hubbard metal-insulator transition. We observe that no dramatic increase of the averaged current or its rms value as a result of interactions is possible for these systems.