We study theoretically the interactions of excitonic states with surface
electromagnetic modes of small-diameter (~1 nm) semiconducting single-walled
carbon nanotubes. We show that these interactions can result in strong
exciton-surface-plasmon coupling. The exciton absorption line shape exhibits
Rabi splitting ~0.1 eV as the exciton energy is tuned to the nearest interband
surface plasmon resonance of the nanotube. We also show that the quantum
confined Stark effect may be used as a tool to control the exciton binding
energy and the nanotube band gap in carbon nanotubes in order, e.g., to bring
the exciton total energy in resonance with the nearest interband plasmon mode.
The exciton-plasmon Rabi splitting we predict here for an individual carbon
nanotube is close in its magnitude to that previously reported for hybrid
plasmonic nanostructures artificially fabricated of organic semiconductors on
metallic films. We expect this effect to open up paths to new tunable
optoelectronic device applications of semiconducting carbon nanotubes.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, accepted for PR