Fifty years ago Walter Kohn speculated that a zero-gap semiconductor might be unstable against the spontaneous generation of excitons-electron-hole pairs bound together by Coulomb attraction. The reconstructed ground state would then open a gap breaking the symmetry of the underlying lattice, a genuine consequence of electronic correlations. Here we show that this excitonic insulator is realized in zero-gap carbon nanotubes by performing first-principles calculations through many-body perturbation theory as well as quantum Monte Carlo. The excitonic order modulates the charge between the two carbon sublattices opening an experimentally observable gap, which scales as the inverse of the tube radius and weakly depends on the axial magnetic field. Our findings call into question the Luttinger liquid paradigm for nanotubes and provide tests to experimentally discriminate between excitonic and Mott insulators.

Carbon nanotubes as excitonic insulators / Varsano, Daniele; Sorella, Sandro; Sangalli, Davide; Barborini, Matteo; Corni, Stefano; Molinari, Elisa; Rontani, Massimo. - In: NATURE COMMUNICATIONS. - ISSN 2041-1723. - 8:1(2017), pp. 1461-1469.

I documenti presenti in Iris Unimore sono rilasciati con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0 Italia, salvo diversa indicazione.
In caso di violazione di copyright, contattare Supporto Iris

Powered by IRIS-about IRIS-Utilizzo dei cookie

 Copyright © 2021