Strongly correlated electron behavior in carbon nanotubes

Abstract

One dimensional systems offer a fascinating platform for investigating and understanding the collective and many-body behavior of interacting electron systems. We report low-temperature transport experiments on carbon nanotubes, which are archetypal one-dimensional systems that have either semiconducting or metallic band structure depending on their radius and chirality. Semiconducting nanotubes at low densities exhibit Wigner crystal behavior, while nominally metallic nanotubes are observed to have an energy gap at half filling, consistent with theories of a Mott insulating state in nanotubes. Our results demonstrate nanotubes’ promise for studying a variety of tunable correlated electron phenomena in one dimension.