The Peierls Instability in Metal Nanowires

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The Peierls Instability in Metal Nanowires

• Daniel Urban
• (Albert-Ludwigs Universität Freiburg, Germany)
• In collaboration with C.A.Stafford and H.Grabert

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Peierls Instability
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Nanoscale Free-Electron Model (NFEM)

• free electrons confining potential

• ions incompressible homogeneous background

• nanowire quantum waveguide

NFEM is suitable for s-orbital-metals (alkali
metals, gold)
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NFEM Nanowire Waveguide
kF,1
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Peierls Instability at Length L
Cylindrical wire perturbation

• nanowire with finite length L

• no periodic boundary conditions

• system nanowire leads

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Surface Phonons
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Scattering Matrix Formalism
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Mode Stiffness
Cylindrical nanowire perturbation
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Dispersion Relation
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CDW Correlations
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Finite-size Scaling
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Correlation length ?n
singular part of the mode stiffness
tunable by applying strain
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Summary

• Peierls instability in metal nanowires at LLC?

• Hyperscaling of the singular part of the free
  energy

• CDW in metal nanowires should be
• experimentally observable under strain

• Further reading
• DFU, Stafford, Grabert, cond-mat/0610787
• DFU, Grabert, PRL 91, 256803

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