Strong Light-Matter Coupling in Carbon Nanotubes as a Route to Exciton Brightening

We show that strong light-matter coupling can be used to overcome a long standing problem that has prevented efficient optical emission from carbon nanotubes. The luminescence from the nominally bright exciton states of carbon nanotubes is quenched due to the fast nonradiative scattering to the dark exciton state having a lower energy. We present a theoretical analysis to show that by placing carbon nanotubes in an optical microcavity the bright exctonic state may be split into two hybrid exciton-polariton states, while the dark state remains unaltered. For sufficiently strong coupling between the bright exciton and the cavity, we show that the energy of the lower polariton may be pushed below that of the dark exciton. This overturning of the relative energies of the bright and dark excitons prevents the dark exciton from quenching the emission. Our resutls pave the way for a new approach to band-engineering the properties of the nanoscale optoelectronic devices.Comment: 35 pages, 5 figures, 6 pages of supplementary materials, 1 supplementary figur

Terahertz applications of carbon nanotubes and graphene nanoribbons

The results of the theoretical study of interband THz transitions in narrow-gap carbon nanotubes and graphene nanoribbons are reported. We consider dipole transitions across magnetically-induced gaps in armchair nanotubes, curvature-induced gaps in quasi-metallic nanotubes and edge-effect induced gaps in armchair nanoribbons. A giant enhancement of the transition matrix elements is discovered for all three types of nanostructures. © 2015 IEEE