Spontaneous emission between mirrors

Karl Heinz Drexhage

Karel E. Drabe, Gerard Cnossen, Douwe A. Wiersma

Karel E. Drabe, Gerard Cnossen, D. A. Wiersma

Emely Wiegand, Göran Johansson

Wang De-Hua, Huang Kai-Yun, Qiang Xu

Using the photon closed orbit theory, the spontaneous emission rate of a polarized atom in a medium between two parallel mirrors is derived and calculated. It is found that the spontaneous emission rate of a polarized atom between the mirrors is related to the atomic position and the polarization direction. The results show that in the vicinity of the mirror, the variation of the spontaneous emission rate depends crucially on the atomic polarization direction. With the increase of the polarization angle, the oscillation in the spontaneous emission rate becomes decreased. For the polarization direction parallel to the mirror plane, the oscillation is the greatest; while for the perpendicular polarization direction, the oscillation is nearly vanished. The agreement between our result and the quantum electrodynamics result suggests the correctness of our calculation. This study further verifies that the atomic spontaneous emission process can be effectively controlled by changing the polarization orientation of the atom.

Zhengmao Jia, Hui Zhou, Lin Sheng-Lu

Quantum electrodynamics formulas are applied to calculate the spontaneous emission rate of an excited atom in the vicinity of a perfect reflecting mirror. The result exhibits that damping oscillating patterns depend sensitively on the distance of the atom to the mirror. And then we use Fourier transform to extract the corresponding frequency of the osciations. In order to explain this phenomena, we are the first to utilize the closed-orbit theory to deal with the spontaneous emission rate of an emitted photon near a mirror. So this study provides a different perspective on the spontaneous emission of atoms in environments.