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Bright, long-lived and coherent excitons in carbon nanotube quantum dots

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes exhibit a wealth of unique physical properties. By virtue of their exceptionally low mass and extreme stiffness they provide ultrahigh-quality mechanical resonances1, promise long electron spin coherence times in a nuclear-spin free lattice2,3 for quantum information processing and spintronics, and feature unprecedented tunability of optical transitions4,5 for optoelectronic applications6. Excitons in semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes7,8 could facilitate the upconversion of spin9, mechanical10 or hybrid spin–mechanical11 degrees of freedom to optical frequencies for efficient manipulation and detection. However, successful implementation of such schemes with carbon nanotubes has been impeded by rapid exciton decoherence at non-radiative quenching sites12, environmental dephasing13 and emission intermittence14. Here we demonstrate that these limitations may be overcome by exciton localization in suspended carbon nanotubes. For excitons localized in nanotube quantum dots we found narrow optical lines free of spectral wandering, radiative exciton lifetimes15,16,17 and effectively suppressed blinking. Our findings identify the great potential of localized excitons for efficient and spectrally precise interfacing of photons, phonons and spins in novel carbon nanotube-based quantum devices.

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Figure 1: Basic characteristics of as-grown suspended carbon nanotubes.
Figure 2: Role of spectral fluctuations in the photoluminescence lineshape.
Figure 3: Photoluminescence decay times.
Figure 4: Photoluminescence saturation and second-order coherence.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank V. Perebeinos for pointing out analytical expressions for the calculation of exciton lifetimes, C. Schönenberger and M. Weiss for introducing us to their CVD technique, S. Stapfner and F. Storek for their contribution to nanotube synthesis, R. Schreiber and P. Nickels for assistance with TEM imaging, P. Maletinsky for critical reading of the manuscript and J. P. Kotthaus for continuous support. The authors acknowledge valuable discussions with A. Imamoğlu, S. Rotkin, A. Srivastava and I. Wilson-Rae. This research was funded by the German Excellence Initiative via the Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM), with financial support from the Center for NanoScience (CeNS) and LMUexcellent.

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M.S.H., R.D. and C.B. developed the CNT synthesis and fabricated the samples. M.S.H. and J.T.G. set up the experiment. M.S.H., J.T.G., J.N., R.D. and C.B. performed the measurements. M.S.H., J.N. and A.H. analysed the data and performed the theoretical modelling. M.S.H. and A.H. prepared the figures and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Matthias S. Hofmann or Alexander Högele.

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Hofmann, M., Glückert, J., Noé, J. et al. Bright, long-lived and coherent excitons in carbon nanotube quantum dots. Nature Nanotech 8, 502–505 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.119

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