Using low-resistance electrical contacts, we have measured the intrinsic
high-field transport properties of metallic single-wall carbon nanotubes.
Individual nanotubes appear to be able to carry currents with a density
exceeding 10^9 A/cm^2. As the bias voltage is increased, the conductance drops
dramatically due to scattering of electrons. We show that the current-voltage
characteristics can be explained by considering optical or zone-boundary phonon
emission as the dominant scattering mechanism at high field.Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps figure