Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids and Coulomb blockade in multiwall carbon nanotubes under pressure

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that the conductance behavior of multiwall carbon nanotube bundles under pressure aligns with Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquid theory, revealing power-law dependencies and distinguishing from Coulomb blockade effects observed in individual nanotubes.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence linking conductance power laws in MWNT bundles to LL theory and explores pressure effects on their electronic properties.

Findings

Conductance exhibits power-law behavior in temperature and voltage.

Exponent ratios suggest LL behavior over Coulomb blockade.

Thermal effects influence conductance at interband separation temperatures.

Abstract

We report that the conductance of macroscopic multiwall nanotube (MWNT) bundles under pressure shows power laws in temperature and voltage, as corresponding to a network of bulk-bulk connected Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquids (LL). Contrary to individual MWNT, where the observed power laws are attributed to Coulomb blockade, the measured ratio for the end and bulk obtained exponents, ~2.4, can only be accounted for by LL theory. At temperatures characteristic of interband separation, it increases due to thermal population of the conducting sheets unoccupied bands.