(Invited) Optical Signatures of Carbon Nanotube Excitons Coupled to Plasmonic Nanocavities and Metallo-Dielectric Antennas

Abstract

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have recently gained tremendous interest as a nanomaterial for next generation optoelectronics and quantum photonic devices, in particular through the demonstration of quantum light emission at room temperature in doped SWCNTs [1]. For further advances and to enable practical applications in quantum information processing light enhancement strategies are required. To this end plasmonic nanocavities such as bowtie antennas feature nanometer gaps that can support ultra-small mode volumes which are particularly attractive to enhance the exciton emission of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). In this talk we will discuss several technique to achieve the required spectral, spatial, and orientational resonance between SWCNT excitons and nanoplasmonic modes. Both time integrated and time-resolved measurements reveal characteristic signatures demonstrating pronounced coupling in the Purcell regime. As a test system we employ co-polymer wrapped carbon nanotubes for which we have recently shown that the polymer backbone can lead to efficient acoustic-phonon localization implying long exciton coherence times and ultra-narrow linewidth [2]. In addition, we will discuss SWCNT excitons coupled to metallo-dielectric antennas and evaluate the light collection efficiency enhancements achievable with this approach. Finally, we will discuss the prospects of achieving transform limited single photons in these systems. [1] X. Ma, N.F. Hartmann, J.K.S. Baldwin, S.K. Doorn, and H. Htoon, “Room-temperature single-photon generation from solitary dopants of carbon nanotubes”, Nature Nanotech 10, 671–675 (2015). [2] I. Sarpkaya, Ehsaneh D. Ahmadi, Gabriella D. Shepard, Kevin S. Mistry, Jeffrey L. Blackburn, and S. Strauf, “Strong Acoustic Phonon Localization in Copolymer-Wrapped Carbon Nanotubes”, ACS Nano 9, 6383 (2015).