Physical Review A
Suppression and acceleration effects of measurements on atomic decay in anisotropic photonic crystals
Yaping Yang, Michael Fleischhauer, Shi-Yao Zhu
Abstract
We study the measurement-induced suppression or acceleration of the radiative decay of an atom embedded in an anisotropic photonic crystal. Due to the presence of a band gap in the electromagnetic density of states, repeated projections onto the excited state of the atom can lead to a suppression or acceleration effect already at rather low repetition rates. It is shown that in contrast to the isotropic band-gap materials, both suppression and acceleration effects are possible, depending on the detuning of the atomic transition from the band edge and the frequency of measurements.