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

摘要

The spontaneous decay of an excited state of an emitter placed in thevicinity of a metallic single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT) was examinedtheoretically. The emitter-SWNT coupling strongly depends on the position ofthe emitter relative to the SWNT, the length of the SWNT, the dipole transitionfrequency and the orientation of the emitter. In the high-frequency regime,dips in the spectrum of the spontaneous decay rate exist at the resonancefrequencies in the spectrum of the SWNT conductivity. In theintermediate-frequency regime, the SWNT conductivity is very low, and thespontaneous decay rate is practically unaffected by the SWNT. In thelow-frequency regime, the spectrum of the spontaneous decay rate containsresonances at the antennas resonance frequencies for surface-wave propagationin the SWNT. Enhancement of both the total and radiative spontaneous decayrates by several orders in magnitude is predicted at these resonancefrequencies. The strong emitter-field coupling is achieved, in spite of the lowQ factor of the antenna resonances, due to the very high magnitude of theelectromagnetic field in the near-field zone. The vacuum Rabi oscillations ofthe population of the excited emitter state are exhibited when the emitter iscoupled to an antenna resonance of the SWNT.