Saturation of the photoluminescence at few-exciton levels in a single-walled carbon nanotube under ultrafast excitation

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Jan 8;104(1):017401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.017401. Epub 2010 Jan 8.

Abstract

Single air-suspended carbon nanotubes (length 2-5 microm) exhibit high optical quantum efficiency (7-20%) for low intensity resonant pumping. Under ultrafast excitation (150 fs), emission dramatically saturates at very low exciton numbers (2-6), which is attributed to highly efficient exciton-exciton annihilation over micron-length scales. Similar saturation behavior for 4 ps pulse excitation shows nonlinear absorption is not a contributing factor. The absorption cross sections (0.6-1.8x10(-17) cm2/atom) are determined by fitting to a stochastic model for exciton dynamics.