One-electron states and interband optical absorption in single-wall carbon nanotubes

TL;DR

This paper derives explicit wave functions and dispersion relations for electrons in single-wall carbon nanotubes, analyzing their optical absorption and circular dichroism properties, and comparing results with graphite.

Contribution

It provides new explicit expressions for electron wave functions and dispersion in nanotubes using zero-range potentials, and investigates their optical absorption characteristics.

Findings

Circular dichroism is absent in chiral nanotubes for axial light.

Derived explicit wave functions and dispersion equations for nanotube electrons.

Compared nanotube optical properties with those of graphite.

Abstract

Explicit expressions for the wave functions and dispersion equation for the band p - electrons in single-wall carbon nanotubes are obtained within the method of zero-range potentials. They are then used to investigate the absorption spectrum of polarized light caused by direct interband transitions in isolated nanotubes. It is shown that, at least, under the above approximations, the circular dichroism is absent in chiral nanotubes for the light wave propagating along the tube axis. The results obtained are compared with those calculated in a similar way for a graphite plane.