Electro-optical properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes

Optical conductivity tensor and electron energy loss function for individual single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) of arbitrary chirality are found. The reported two types of results obtained in the TEM measurements on the isolated SWCNT of the same diameter are interpreted. The difference in plasmon excitation probabilities is shown to be related to the different numbers of allowed interband transitions in the chiral and achiral tubes, while the peak position shift is to be attributed to the interrelationship between the parities of the electronic states of the armchair tubes and the polarization of the perturbing field.