Nonlinear light propagation in a single-mode micron-size waveguide made of semiconducting excitonic material has been theoretically studied in terms of exciton polaritons by using an analysis based on macroscopic fields. When a light pulse is spectrally centered in the vicinity of the ground-state Wannier exciton resonance, it interacts with the medium nonlinearly. This optical cubic nonlinearity is caused by the repulsive exciton-exciton interactions in the semiconductor, and at resonance it is orders of magnitude larger than the Kerr nonlinearity (e.g., in silica). We demonstrate that a very strong and unconventional modulational instability takes place, which has not been previously reported. After reducing the problem to a single nonlinear Schrodinger-like equation, we also explore the formation of solitary waves both inside and outside the polaritonic gap and find evidence of spectral broadening. A realistic physical model of the excitonic waveguide structure is proposed

The ground-state exciton binding energy for single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in vacuum calculated ignoring the screening of Coulomb interaction appears to be much greater than the corresponding band gap. The most essential contributions to the screening of electron-hole (e-h) interaction potential in semiconducting SWCNTs, which return the ground-state exciton binding energy into the energy gap, are considered. Our estimates on the screening effects and exciton binding energies are in satisfactory agreement with the corresponding experimental data for concrete nanotubes.PACS number(s): 78.67.Ch

The spectrum of large radius exciton in an individual semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) is described within the framework of elementary potential model, in which exciton is modeled as bound state of two oppositely charged quasi-particles confined on the tube surface. Due to the parity of the interaction potential the exciton states split into the odd and even series. It is shown that for the bare and screened Coulomb electron-hole (e-h) potentials the binding energy of even excitons in the ground state well exceeds the energy gap. The factors preventing the collapse of single-electron states in isolated semiconducting SWCNTs are discussed.

The large-radius exciton spectrum in a linear crystal with two atoms in the unit cell was obtained using the single-electron eigenfunctions and the band structure, which were found by the zero-range potentials (ZRPs) method. The ground-state exciton binding energies for the linear crystal in vacuum appeared to be larger than the corresponding energy gaps for any set of the crystal parameters.

The nonlinear optical properties of semiconductors near an excitonic resonance are investigated theoretically by using the macroscopic J model [Ostreich and Knorr, Phys. Rev. B 48, 17811 (1993); 50, 5717 (1994)] based on the microscopic semiconductor Bloch equations. These nonlinear properties cause modulational instability of long light pulses with large gain and give rise to a self-induced transmission of short light pulses in a semiconductor. By an example of the latter well-studied effect, the validity of the used macroscopic model is demonstrated, and good agreement is found with both existing theoretical and experimental results