Zitterbewegung of electrons in carbon nanotubes created by laser pulses

Abstract

We describe a possibility of creating non-stationary electron wave packets in zigzag carbon nanotubes (CNT) illuminated by short laser pulses. After disappearance of the pulse the packet experiences the trembling motion (Zitterbewegung, ZB). The band structure of CNT is calculated using the tight-binding approximation generalized for the presence of radiation. Employing realistic pulse and CNT parameters we obtain the ZB oscillations with inter-band frequencies corresponding to specific pairs of energy bands. A choice of optimal parameters is presented in order to observe the phenomenon of ZB experimentally. The use of Gaussian wave packets to trigger the electron Zitterbewegung, as used in the literature, is critically reexamined.

22 pages, 9 figures, IOP format, published version in two-column form

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Cited by in corpus (7)

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• Wave packet dynamics and zitterbewegung of heavy holes in a quantizing magnetic field
• Effect of zitterbewegung on the propagation of wave packets in ABC-stacked multilayer graphene: an analytical and computational approach
• $\text{Zitterbewegung}$ near new Dirac points in graphene superlattice
• Two-photon echo method for observing electron Zitterbewegung in carbon nanotubes
• Zitterbewegung-mediated RKKY coupling in topological insulator thin films
• Intra-cell dynamics and cyclotron motion without magnetic field