Vanishing conductivity of quantum solitons in polyacetylene

TL;DR

This paper provides an exact quantum calculation showing that the conductivity of quantum solitons in polyacetylene vanishes, challenging previous assumptions about their role in electrical conduction.

Contribution

It introduces a fully quantized method based on order-disorder duality for soliton quantization in polyacetylene, revealing the vanishing conductivity of quantum solitons.

Findings

Quantum soliton conductivity in polyacetylene is exactly zero.

Application of a duality-based quantization method to the soliton model.

Polyacetylene solitons are identified as sine-Gordon solitons in the phase of a complex field.

Abstract

Quantum solitons or polarons are supposed to play a crucial role in the electric conductivity of polyacetylene, in the intermediate doping regime. We present an exact fully quantized calculation of the quantum soliton conductivity in polyacetylene and show that it vanishes exactly. This is obtained by applying a general method of soliton quantization, based on order-disorder duality, to a Z(2)-symmetric complex extension of the TLM dimerization effective field theory. We show that, in this theory, polyacetylene solitons are sine-Gordon solitons in the phase of the complex field.