Scaling Theory of the Peierls-CDW in Metal Nanowires

D. F. Urban, C. A. Stafford, Hermann Grabert

Published 2006-10-27, updated 2007-05-29Version 2

The Peierls instability in multi-channel metal nanowires is investigated. Hyperscaling relations are established for the finite-size-, temperature-, and wavevector-scaling of the electronic free energy. It is shown that the softening of surface modes at wavevector $q=2k_{F,\nu}$ leads to critical fluctuations of the wire's radius at zero temperature, where $k_{F,\nu}$ is the Fermi wavevector of the highest occupied channel. This Peierls charge density wave emerges as the system size becomes comparable to the channel correlation length. Although the Peierls instability is weak in metal nanowires, in the sense that the correlation length is exponentially long, we predict that nanowires fabricated by current techniques can be driven into the charge-density-wave regime under strain.