Spontaneous decay of an excited state of an emitter coupled to parallel SWNTs placed in the vicinity of a plane interface between two dielectric materials

After devising an integral-equation formalism to study the spontaneous decay rate of an emitter coupled to an array of three identical and parallel SWNTs, the half spaces containing the emitter and the SWNTs being occupied by homogeneous materials of different relative permittivities, and the electric dipole moment of the emitter as well as all SWNTs aligned normal to the bimaterial interface, we found that the presence of SWNTs substantially enhances the spontaneous decay rate. The spectrum of the decay rate contains closely spaced sub-resonances, which arise from the propagation of surface plasmon-polariton waves on the SWNTs. The sub-resonance frequencies decrease with the increase of the relative permittivity of the material surrounding the SWNT and come closer to each other as the inter-SWNT distance decreases.