arXiv:1602.09048 · Physical Review A
Electric dipole coupling in optical cavities and its implications for energy transfer, up-conversion, and pooling
Michael D. LaCount, Mark T. Lusk
Abstract
Resonant energy transfer, energy transfer up-conversion, and energy pooling are considered within optical cavities to elucidate the relationship between exciton dynamics and donor-acceptor separation distance. This is accomplished by using perturbation theory to derive analytic expressions for the electric dipole coupling tensors of perfect planar and rectangular channel reflectors---directly related to a number of important energy-transfer processes. In the near field, the separation dependence along the cavity axis is not influenced by the cavity and is essentially the same as for three-dimensional free space. This is in sharp contrast with the reduced sensitivity to separation found in idealized low-dimensional settings. The cavity dynamics only correspond to their reduced-dimensional counterparts in the far field where such excitonic processes are not typically of interest. There is an intermediate regime, though, where sufficiently small cavities cause a substantial decrease in separation sensitivity that results in one component of the dipole-dipole coupling tensor being much larger than those of free space.