[CCoE Notice] Seminar Announcement

[Lewis, Lindsay R]

***** Colloquium *****
Center for Integrated Bio and Nano Systems
Houston Chapter of IEEE Nanotechnology Council and Houston Chapter of IEEE Magnetics Society
Friday, February 4, 2011
12:30 p.m. (Refreshments served at noon)
Room: W122 Building D3

Ultrafast and Nonlinear Optical Spectroscopy of Carbon Nanotubes
Junichiro Kono, Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Physics & Astronomy, Rice University

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) provide a variety of new opportunities for probing
exotic physics of one-dimensional (1-D) electrons and phonons. At the same time, they possess
unique properties that are promising for future applications in optoelectronics. This talk will
describe our recent ultrafast and nonlinear optical experiments on SWNTs, revealing novel
properties of high-density 1-D excitons as well as lattice vibrations. We have shown that there
exists an upper limit on the density of 1-D excitons in SWNTs, which results in
photoluminescence saturation. Using a model based on diffusion-limited exciton-exciton
annihilation, we provided realistic estimates for the exciton densities in the saturation regime.
Using ultrashort pulses, we have also investigated the dynamics of coherent phonons (CPs) in
SWNTs, including both the low frequency radial breathing mode and high frequency G-mode
phonons. Pulse shaping techniques allowed us to generate and detect CPs in SWNTs in a
chirality-selective manner, which provided insight into the chirality dependence of light
absorption, phonon generation, and phonon-induced band-structure modulations.


Junichiro Kono received his B.S. and M.S.
degrees in applied physics from the University of Tokyo in 1990 and
1992, respectively, and completed his Ph.D. in physics from the State
University of New York at Buffalo in 1995. He was a postdoctoral
research associate in condensed matter physics at the University of
California, Santa Barbara in 1995-1997 and the W. W. Hansen
Experimental Physics Laboratory Fellow in the Department of Physics at
Stanford University in 1997-2000. He joined the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering of Rice University in 2000 as an
Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2005.
Since 2009, he has been a Professor in the Departments of Electrical&
Computer Engineering and Physics&  Astronomy at Rice University.
Kono's current research interests include optical studies of
low-dimensional systems; spintronics and quantum information
processing; nonlinear, ultrafast, and quantum optics in solids;
phenomena in ultrahigh magnetic fields; and terahertz phenomena in
semiconductors.

Contact Prof. Jiming Bao (jbao at uh.edu<mailto:jbao at uh.edu>) if you would like to arrange for a time to meet with Dr. Kono.