Conductance and coherence lengths in disordered carbon nanotubes: Role of lattice defects and phonon vibrations

Abstract

We report on a theoretical study of quantum transport in carbon nanotubes in the presence of two different sources of scattering: a static short-range random potential that simulates lattice defects, superimposed onto a long-range time-dependent perturbation that mimics the phonon-induced real-space atomic displacements. In the weak-localization regime, fluctuations of the coherent length scales are shown to be driven by band-structure features, whereas the phonon-induced delocalization effect occurs in the stronger-localization regime.