Nonlinear Luttinger liquid plasmons in semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes

Interacting electrons confined in one dimension are generally described by the Luttinger liquid formalism, where the low-energy electronic dispersion is assumed to be linear and the resulting plasmonic excitations are non-interacting. Instead, a Luttinger liquid in one-dimensional materials with nonlinear electronic bands is expected to show strong plasmon–plasmon interactions, but an experimental demonstration of this behaviour has been lacking. Here, we combine infrared nano-imaging and electronic transport to investigate the behaviour of plasmonic excitations in semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes with carrier density controlled by electrostatic gating. We show that both the propagation velocity and the dynamic damping of plasmons can be tuned continuously, which is well captured by the nonlinear Luttinger liquid theory. These results contrast with the gate-independent plasmons observed in metallic nanotubes, as expected for a linear Luttinger liquid. Our findings provide an experimental demonstration of one-dimensional electron dynamics beyond the conventional linear Luttinger liquid paradigm and are important for understanding excited-state properties in one dimension.