A nanotube lattice reveals how electrons shift between 1D and 2D quantum phases beneath voltage management
Carbon nanotube arrays are designed to analyze the behaviour of electrons in low‑dimensional methods. By arranging nicely‑aligned 1D nanotubes right into a 2D movie, the researchers create a coupled‑wire construction that enables them to review how electrons transfer and work together because the system transitions between totally different dimensionalities. Utilizing a gate electrode positioned on high of the array, the researchers had been in a position to tune each the service density (variety of electrons and holes in a unit space) and the power of electron–electron interactions, enabling managed entry to regimes. The nanotubes behave as weakly coupled 1D channels the place electrons transfer alongside every nanotube, as a 2D Fermi liquid the place the electrons can transfer between nanotubes behaving like a standard steel, or as a set of quantum‑dot‑like islands exhibiting Coulomb blockade the place at low service densities sections of the nanotubes turn into remoted.
The dimensional transitions are set by two key temperatures: T₂D, the place electrons start to hop between neighbouring nanotubes, and T₁D, the place the system behaves as a Luttinger liquid which is a 1D state through which electrons can not simply cross one another and due to this fact transfer in a strongly correlated, collective means. Altering the variety of holes within the nanotubes adjustments how strongly the tubes work together with one another. This controls when the system stops performing like separate 1D wires and when sturdy interactions make elements of the movie break up into remoted areas that present Coulomb blockade.
The researchers constructed a part diagram by how the conductance adjustments with temperature and voltage, and by checking how nicely it follows energy‑regulation behaviour at totally different power ranges. This method permits them to determine the boundaries between Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid, Fermi liquid and Coulomb blockade phases throughout a variety of gate voltages and temperatures.
Total, the work demonstrates a steady crossover between 2D, 1D and 0D digital behaviour in a controllable nanotube array. This supplies an experimentally accessible platform for learning correlated low‑dimensional physics and gives insights related to the event of nanoscale digital units and future carbon nanotube applied sciences.
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