Helical liquid in carbon nanotubes wrapped with DNA molecules

TL;DR

This paper explores how helix-shaped potentials and curvature-induced spin-orbit coupling in carbon nanotubes create helicity-dependent electronic gaps, enabling potential spin filtering and the study of one-dimensional helical liquids.

Contribution

It demonstrates that helix-shaped potentials induce helicity-dependent gaps in carbon nanotubes, revealing a new way to realize and study helical liquids.

Findings

Helix-shaped potentials open helicity-dependent gaps in nanotubes.

Left- and right-moving electrons have opposite spin projections within these gaps.

Twisting nanotubes can also induce similar helicity-dependent effects.

Abstract

The measured electric resistance of carbon nanotubes wrapped with DNA molecules depends strongly on the spin of the injected electrons. Motivated by these experiments, we study the effect of helix-shaped potentials on the electronic spectrum of carbon nanotubes. We find that in combination with the curvature-induced spin-orbit coupling inherent to nanotubes, such a perturbation opens helicity-dependent gaps. Within these partial gaps, left-moving electrons carry a fixed spin-projection that is reversed for right-moving electrons, and the probability of electrons to transfer through the nanotube correlates with their helicity. We explain the origin of this effect and show that it can alternatively be induced by twisting the nanotube. Our findings suggest that carbon nanotubes hold great potential for implementing spin filters and may form an ideal platform to study the physical properties of one-dimensional helical liquids.