Continuum model of optical phonons in a nanotube

The properties of nanotubes are of intense current interest due, in part, t o the discovery of the carbon nanotube. In this paper, the optical phonons are modeled for a nanotube by treating the nanotube as a continuum medium. A quantization prescription is applied to facilitate the first determinatio n of the quantum-mechanical normalizations of selected optical phonon modes . It is shown that normalization of the lowest azimuthal mode may be determ ined analytically. The deformation potentials describing carrier optical-ph onon scattering are readily determined from these normalized continuum mode s. (C) 2001 Academic Press.