Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer formalism of superconductivity in carbon nanotubes

TL;DR

This paper develops a BCS formalism to understand superconductivity in carbon nanotubes, showing how transition temperature varies with diameter and layer interactions, aligning with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a BCS-based model specific to carbon nanotubes, accounting for diameter effects and interlayer coupling on superconductivity.

Findings

Transition temperature decreases exponentially with tube diameter.

Interlayer Cooper pairing enhances superconductivity in multi-wall nanotubes.

Model predictions align with experimental observations.

Abstract

We develop the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) formalism for the superconductivity of carbon nanotubes. It is found that the superconducting transition temperature Tc of single-wall carbon nanotubes decreases exponentially with the increase of the tube diameter because the density of states near the Fermi energy is inversely proportional to the tube diameter. For the multi-wall carbon nanotubes, the Cooper paring hopping between layers enhances the superconducting correlation and increases the superconducting transition temperature, which is consistent with the experimental observation.