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Published on: February 5, 2017
Twist instability in strongly correlated carbon nanotubes
Wei Chen1, A V Andreev, A M Tsvelik
1Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-1560, USA.
Abstract:
We show that strong Luttinger correlations of the electron liquid in armchair carbon nanotubes significantly enhance the onset temperature of the putative twist Peierls instability and lead to its 1/R3 dependence on the tube radius. Depending on the values of the coupling constants the umklapp processes can either assist or compete with the twist instability. In the case of a competition the umklapp processes win in wide tubes. In narrow tubes the outcome of the competition depends on the relative strength of the e-e and e-ph backscattering. Our estimates show that the twist instability may be realized in freestanding (5,5) tubes.
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