Floquet engineering of carbon nanotubes

Abstract

Abstract The Floquet theory for electrons in carbon nanotubes (CNTs) irradiated by a circularly polarized electromagnetic wave propagating along the CNT axis is developed. It is demonstrated, particularly, that the irradiation opens the gap between the conduction and valence bands of CNTs of metal type and lifts the degeneracy of electron states with mutually opposite angular momenta along the CNT axis. As a consequence, the optically-induced metal-insulator transition and the optical Zeeman effect appear in the CNTs. It follows from the theory that these light-induced phenomena can be observed in the modern experiments.