Photon antibunching in the photoluminescence spectra of a single carbon nanotube.
We report the first observation of photon antibunching in the photoluminescence from single carbon nanotubes. The emergence of a fast luminescence decay component under strong optical excitation indicates that Auger processes are partially responsible for inhibiting two-photon generation. Additionally, the presence of exciton localization at low temperatures ensures that nanotubes emit photons predominantly one by one. The fact that multiphoton emission probability can be smaller than 5% suggests that carbon nanotubes could be used as a source of single photons for applications in quantum cryptography.
Institute of Quantum Electronics, ETH Hönggerberg, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 16, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
Alexander
A
Högele
Christophe
C
Galland
Martin
M
Winger
Atac
A
Imamoğlu