Excitonic absorption spectra and ultrafast dephasing dynamics in arbitrary carbon nanotubes

We illustrate the potential of the density matrix theory for investigation of optical properties of arbitrary single‐walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs). We have performed microscopic calculations of excitonic absorption spectra for CNTs of different chiral angles and diameters. The obtained results are in good agreement with experiments, in particular the excitonic binding energies match well both experiments and ab initio calculations. Furthermore, we show the strength of our approach by presenting calculations of the ultrafast Coulomb driven non‐equilibrium dynamics in CNTs. We find excitation induced dephasing on the picosecond time scale depending on the excitation strength. (© 2009 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)