Impact excitation by hot carriers in carbon nanotubes

We investigate theoretically the efficiency of intramolecular hot-carrier-induced impact ionization and excitation processes in carbon nanotubes. The electron confinement and reduced screening lead to drastically enhanced excitation efficiencies over those in bulk materials. Strong excitonic coupling favors neutral excitations over ionization, while the impact mechanism populates a different set of states than that produced by photoexcitation. The excitation rate is strongly affected by optical phonon excitation and a simple scaling of the rate with the field strength and optical phonon temperature is obtained. © 2006 The American Physical Society.