Aharonov-Bohm Oscillation and Chirality Effect in Optical Activity of Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes

Abstract

We study the Aharonov-Bohm effect in the optical phenomena of single wall carbon nanotubes (SWCN) and also their chirality dependence. Specially, we consider the natural optical activity as a proper observable and derive it's general expression based on a comprehensive symmetry analysis, which reveals the interplay between the enclosed magnetic flux and the tubule chirality for arbitrary chiral SWCN. A quantitative result for this optical property is given by a gauge invariant tight-binding approximation calculation to stimulate experimental measurements.