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Observation of a Luttinger-liquid plasmon in metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes

Nature Photonics volume 9, pages 515–519 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Surface plasmons1, collective oscillations of conduction electrons, hold great promise for the nanoscale integration of photonics and electronics1,2,3,4. However, nanophotonic circuits based on plasmons have been significantly hampered by the difficulty in achieving broadband plasmonic waveguides that simultaneously exhibit strong spatial confinement, a high quality factor and low dispersion. Quantum plasmons, where the quantum mechanical effects of electrons play a dominant role, such as plasmons in very small metal nanoparticles5,6 and plasmons affected by tunnelling effects7, can lead to novel plasmonic phenomena in nanostructures. Here, we show that a Luttinger liquid8,9 of one-dimensional Dirac electrons in carbon nanotubes10,11,12,13 exhibits quantum plasmons that behave qualitatively differently from classical plasmon excitations. The Luttinger-liquid plasmons propagate at ‘quantized’ velocities that are independent of carrier concentration or excitation wavelength, and simultaneously exhibit extraordinary spatial confinement and high quality factor. Such Luttinger-liquid plasmons could enable novel low-loss plasmonic circuits for the subwavelength manipulation of light.

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Figure 1: Infrared s-SNOM of one-dimensional plasmons in carbon nanotubes.
Figure 2: Luttinger-liquid plasmons in carbon nanotubes.
Figure 3: Quantized Luttinger-liquid plasmon propagation velocity.
Figure 4: Long-range quantum plasmons in nanotubes.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank M. Raschke for discussions. H.B. and M.M., in particular, thank M. Raschke and his group for the years of pioneering research on infrared near-field techniques and key collaborations that led to the development of a near-field infrared instrument at the Advanced Light Source (ALS). The authors also thank K. Liu, Y. Sun, S. Shi, C. Jin and H. Chang for their help with sample preparation and discussions. This work was primarily supported by the Office of Basic Energy Science, Department of Energy (contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231, Sub-Wavelength Metamaterial Program; contract no. DE-SC0003949, Early Career Award). Spectroscopy of nanotubes in the visible range was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant no. DMR-1404865). The ALS is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the US Department of Energy (contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231). F.W. acknowledges support from a David and Lucile Packard fellowship.

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Author notes

  1. Zhiwen Shi and Xiaoping Hong: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Zhiwen Shi, Xiaoping Hong, Bo Zeng, Yuen-Ron Shen & Feng Wang

  2. Advanced Light Source Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Hans A. Bechtel & Michael C. Martin

  3. Advanced Materials Laboratory, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, 305-0044, Japan

    Kenji Watanabe & Takashi Taniguchi

  4. Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Yuen-Ron Shen & Feng Wang

  5. Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Feng Wang

Authors
  1. Zhiwen Shi
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  9. Feng Wang
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Contributions

F.W. and Z.S. conceived the project. Z.S. and X.H. prepared the nanotube samples. Z.S., H.B. and M.C.M. performed the near-field infrared measurements. X.H. and Z.B. performed visible spectroscopy. K.W. and T.T. provided the hBN crystals. X.H., Z.S., Y.R.S. and F.W. analysed the data. All authors discussed the results and contributed to writing the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zhiwen Shi or Feng Wang.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Shi, Z., Hong, X., Bechtel, H. et al. Observation of a Luttinger-liquid plasmon in metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes. Nature Photon 9, 515–519 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.123

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