Confinement Phase in Carbon-Nanotubes and the Extended Massive Schwinger Model

TL;DR

This paper explores the confinement phase in carbon nanotubes with electric fluxes, demonstrating its similarity to QCD and describing it using an extended massive Schwinger model with multi-species fermions.

Contribution

It introduces a model for confinement in carbon nanotubes, linking condensed matter physics to quantum chromodynamics, and proposes experimental detection methods.

Findings

Confinement phase in nanotubes resembles QCD properties.

Optical measurements can detect exciton spectra related to confinement.

Nonlinear transport reveals Coleman's half-asymptotic state.

Abstract

Carbon nanotube with electric fluxes confined in one dimension is studied. We show that a Coulomb interaction \propto |x| leads to a confinement phase with many properties similar to QCD in 4D. Low-energy physics is described by the massive Schwinger model with multi-species fermions labeled by the band and valley indices. We propose two means to detect this state. One is through an optical measurement of the exciton spectrum, which has been calculated via the 't Hooft-Berknoff equation with the light-front field theory. We show that the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation is satisfied by a dark exciton. The second is the nonlinear transport which is related to Coleman's "half-asymptotic" state.