Coulomb Interactions and Mesoscopic Effects in Carbon Nanotubes

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that Coulomb interactions significantly alter the electronic properties of armchair carbon nanotubes, leading to Luttinger liquid behavior, anomalous resistivity, and spin-charge separation effects observable in tunneling experiments.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical analysis showing how long-range Coulomb forces induce Luttinger liquid characteristics and spin-charge separation in carbon nanotubes, with explicit predictions for experimental signatures.

Findings

Anomalous temperature dependence of resistivity due to Coulomb interactions

Power-law behavior in local tunneling density of states

Evidence of spin-charge separation at low temperatures

Abstract

We argue that long-range Coulomb forces convert an isolated (N,N) armchair carbon nanotube into a strongly-renormalized *Luttinger liquid*. At high temperatures, we find anomalous temperature dependences for the interaction and impurity contributions to the resistivity, and similar power-law dependences for the local tunneling density of states. At low temperatures, the nanotube exhibits spin-charge separation, visible as an extra energy scale in the discrete tunneling density of states (for which we give an analytic form), signaling a departure from the orthodox theory of Coulomb blockade.