Instability of capacitance mode in multi-walled nanotubes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability conditions of capacitance modes in multi-walled carbon nanotubes, highlighting how vacuum polarization effects can induce instabilities leading to charge transfer or density oscillations.

Contribution

It derives stability conditions for Coulomb interactions in multi-walled nanotubes and shows how vacuum polarization can break these conditions, causing instabilities.

Findings

Unstable modes correspond to charge transfer or density oscillations.

Vacuum polarization effects can destabilize the system.

Stability conditions depend on intra and inter-layer Coulomb interactions.

Abstract

Conditions for intra and inter layer Coulomb interactions in multi-walled carbon nanotubes are derived from stability of capacitance excitations. It is pointed out, supposing the stability conditions are not satisfied, that the system has unstable modes which correspond to a charge transfer between layers or charge density oscillation in each layer depending on zero mode or non-zero modes. It is argued that the stability conditions can be broken when the vacuum polarization processes due to the massive bands are taken into account.