Vacuum-field Rabi oscillations in atomically doped carbon nanotubes

We report a strictly non-exponential spontaneous decay dynamics of an excited two-level atom placed inside or at different distances outside a carbon nanotube. This is the result of strong non-Markovian memory effects arising from the rapid frequency variation of the photonic density of states near the nanotube. The system exhibits vacuum-field Rabi oscillations when the atom is close enough to the nanotube surface and the atomic transition frequency is in the vicinity of the resonance of the photonic density of states. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.