Longitudinal solitons in carbon nanotubes

Abstract

We present results on soliton excitations in carbon nanotubes (CNT's) using Brenner's many-body potential. Our numerical simulations demonstrate high soliton stability in $(10,10)$ CNT's. The interactions of solitons and solitary excitation with CNT defect are found to be inelastic if the excitations and defects length scales are comparable, resulting in a substantial part of soliton energy being distributed inhomogeneously over the defect bonds. In these solitary-excitation--cap collisions the local energy of a few bonds in the cap can exceed the average energy by an order of magnitude and more. This phenomenon, denoted the ``Tsunami effect,'' can contribute dynamically to the recently proposed ``kinky chemistry.'' We also present results of changes in the local density of states and variations in the atomic partial charges estimated at different time instants of the solitary-excitation Tsunami at the nanotube cap.