Scattering of plasmons at the intersection of two metallic nanotubes: Implications for tunnelling

Abstract

We study theoretically the plasmon scattering at the intersection of two metallic carbon nanotubes. We demonstrate that for a small angle of crossing, $\theta \ll 1$, the transmission coefficient is an oscillatory function of $\lambda /\theta$, where $\lambda$ is the interaction parameter of the Luttinger liquid in an individual nanotube. We calculate the tunnel density of states, $\nu (\omega ,x)$, as a function of energy, $\omega$, and distance, $x$, from the intersection. In contrast to a single nanotube, we find that, in the geometry of crossed nanotubes, conventional "rapid" oscillations in $\nu (\omega ,x)$ due to the plasmon scattering acquire an aperiodic "slow-breathing" envelope which has $\lambda /\theta$ nodes.

4 pages, 2 figures (revised version)

References in corpus (2)

• Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquid Features in Ballistic Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes: Conductance and Shot Noise
• Sagnac interference in Carbon nanotube loops