Spontaneous decay of an emitter's excited state near a finite-length metallic carbon nanotube

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates how a metallic carbon nanotube influences the spontaneous decay of nearby emitters, revealing resonance-dependent decay rate enhancements and strong emitter-field coupling effects.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the emitter decay dynamics near a finite-length metallic SWNT, highlighting resonance effects and conditions for strong coupling.

Findings

Decay rate resonances at SWNT antenna frequencies

Significant enhancement of spontaneous emission near resonances

Observation of vacuum Rabi oscillations in the system

Abstract

The spontaneous decay of an excited state of an emitter placed in the vicinity of a metallic single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT) was examined theoretically. The emitter-SWNT coupling strongly depends on the position of the emitter relative to the SWNT, the length of the SWNT, the dipole transition frequency and the orientation of the emitter. In the high-frequency regime, dips in the spectrum of the spontaneous decay rate exist at the resonance frequencies in the spectrum of the SWNT conductivity. In the intermediate-frequency regime, the SWNT conductivity is very low, and the spontaneous decay rate is practically unaffected by the SWNT. In the low-frequency regime, the spectrum of the spontaneous decay rate contains resonances at the antennas resonance frequencies for surface-wave propagation in the SWNT. Enhancement of both the total and radiative spontaneous decay rates by several orders in magnitude is predicted at these resonance frequencies. The strong emitter-field coupling is achieved, in spite of the low Q factor of the antenna resonances, due to the very high magnitude of the electromagnetic field in the near-field zone. The vacuum Rabi oscillations of the population of the excited emitter state are exhibited when the emitter is coupled to an antenna resonance of the SWNT.