PRL accepted: Secondary electron interference from trigonal warping in clean carbon nanotubes

We're very happy to announce that a few days ago one of our manuscripts, "Secondary electron interference from trigonal warping in clean carbon nanotubes", was accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters. 

Imagine a graphene "sheet" of carbon atoms rolled into a tube - and you get a carbon nanotube. Carbon nanotubes come in many variants, which influence strongly their electronic properties. They have different diameter, but also different "chiral angle", describing how the pattern of the carbon atoms twists around the tube axis. In our work, we show how to extract information on the nanotube structure from measurements of its conductance. At low temperature, electrons travel ballistically through a nanotube and are only scattered at its ends. For the quantum-mechanical electron wavefunction, metallic nanotubes act then analogous to an optical Fabry-Perot interferometer, i.e., a cavity with two semitransparent mirrors at either end, where a wave is partially reflected. Interference patterns are obtained by tuning the wavelength of the electrons; the current through the nanotube oscillates as a function of an applied gate voltage. The twisted graphene lattice then causes a distinct slow current modulation, which, as we show, allows a direct estimation of the chiral angle. This is an important step towards solving a highly nontrivial problem, namely identifying the precise
molecular structure of a nanotube from electronic measurements alone.

"Secondary electron interference from trigonal warping in clean carbon nanotubes"
A. Dirnaichner, M. del Valle, K. J. G. Götz, F. J. Schupp, N. Paradiso, M. Grifoni, Ch. Strunk, and A. K. Hüttel
accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters; arXiv:1602.03866 (PDF, supplemental information)