Solitons in carbon nanotubes

The symmetries of spontaneous lattice distortions in carbon nanotubes are i nvestigated. When the degeneracy of the ground states remains discrete, the re are solitons or domain walls connecting the different symmetry-broken va ccua. These solitons, similarly to the case of polyacetelene, are fractiona lly charged states. In addition to the topological domain walls, there are polaron states with discrete energies within the energy gap. The energies a nd shapes of these localized midgap states should be accessible via scannin g tunneling microscopy spectroscopy.