Strong enhancement of the Breit-Wigner-Fano Raman line in carbon nanotube bundles caused by plasmon band formation

We investigate the origin of the Breit-Wigner-Fano line in the Raman spectra of individual single-walled carbon nanotubes and their bundles. Using confocal Raman microscopy and atomic-force microscopy we found that the Breit-Wigner-Fano line intensity increases strongly with the bundle thickness. We confirmed this result by Raman investigations of partially decomposed bundles, which were additionally investigated by transmission electron microscopy. Our random-phase approximation based theory, which identifies the Breit-Wigner-Fano line as an excited band of plasmon-phonon modes, is fully consistent with the experimental results.