Phonon eigenvectors of chiral nanotubes - art. no. 195416

Although a commonly neglected fact, the physical properties of chiral carbo n nanotubes may differ significantly from those of the usually considered, simpler achiral tubes. We show that the phonon eigenvectors, e.g., of the h igh-energy eigenmodes no longer fall into axial and circumferential modes a s in armchair and zig-zag nanotubes. The atomic displacement may, instead, point in any tangential direction and even show an angular dependence of it s direction around the circumference, as the results of ab initio calculati ons demonstrate.