Optical Phonon Lineshapes and Transport in Metallic Carbon Nanotubes under High Bias Voltage

Abstract

We calculate the current-voltage characteristic of metallic nanotubes at high bias voltage showing that a bottleneck exists for short nanotubes in contrast to large ones. We attribute this to a redistribution of lower-lying acoustic phonons caused by phonon-phonon scattering with hot optical phonons. The current-voltage characteristic and the electron and phonon distribution functions are derived analytically, and serve to obtain in a self-contained way the frequency shift and line broadening of the zone center optical phonons due to the electron-phonon coupling at high bias. We obtain a positive frequency shift from the zero bias shift and no broadening of the optical phonon mode at very high voltages, in agreement with recent experiments.