(Invited) Single Carbon-Nanotube Photonics and Optoelectronics

Single-walled carbon nanotubes have unique optical properties as a result of their one-dimensional structure. Not only do they exhibit strong polarization for both absorption and emission, large exciton binding energies allow for room-temperature excitonic luminescence. Furthermore, their emission is in the telecom-wavelengths and they can be directly synthesized on silicon substrates, providing new opportunities for nanoscale photonics and optoelectronics.

Here we discuss the use of individual single-walled carbon nanotubes for generation, manipulation, and detection of light on a chip. Their emission can be efficiently coupled to specially-designed silicon photonic-crystal nanobeam cavities [1]. With the strong absorption polarization at the nanoscale, they allow for unconventional polarization conversion that results in giant circular dichroism [2]. More recently, we have found that alternating gate-voltages can generate optical pulse trains from individual nanotubes [3]. Ultimately, these results may be combined to achieve further control over photons at the nanoscale.

Work supported by KAKENHI, The Canon Foundation, The Asahi Glass Foundation, JSPS Open Partnership Joint Projects, and the Photon Frontier Network Program of MEXT, Japan.

[1] R. Miura, S. Imamura, R. Ohta, A. Ishii, X. Liu, T. Shimada, S. Iwamoto, Y. Arakawa, Y. K. Kato, Nature Commun. 5, 5580 (2014).
[2] A. Yokoyama, M. Yoshida, A. Ishii, Y. K. Kato, Phys. Rev. X 4, 011005 (2014).
[3] M. Jiang, Y. Kumamoto, A. Ishii, M. Yoshida, T. Shimada, Y. K. Kato, arXiv:1407.7086.