On spontaneous emission

A. ROSE

Kishore T. Kapale, Marlan O. Scully, Shi-Yao Zhu +1 more

We investigate the steady-state spontaneous emission of a V-type three-level atom, with the coherence between the two upper levels modified and controlled via incoherent pumping to a fourth auxiliary level. The external pumping gives us an easily controllable handle in manipulating the spontaneous emission to such an extent that, under certain conditions, complete quenching of spontaneous emission is possible. We also show that even the interference between the decay channels, which is considered a key requirement in spontaneous emission quenching through quantum interference, is not essential to achieve near 100% trapping and almost complete suppression of spontaneous emission. Thus we provide a scheme for spontaneous emission quenching which can be easily realized experimentally.

A. Rose

Jing-Nuo Wu, Chih‐Hsien Huang, Szu-Cheng Cheng +1 more

Spontaneous emission (SE) from a two-level atom in an anisotropic photonic crystal (PC) is investigated by the fractional calculus. Physical phenomena of the SE are studied analytically by solving the fractional kinetic equations of the SE. There is a dynamical discrepancy between the SE of anisotropic and isotropic PCs. We find that, contrary to the SE phenomenon of the isotropic PC, the SE near the band edge of an anisotropic PC shows no photon-atom bound state. It is consistent with the experimental results of Barth, Schuster, Gruber, and Cichos [Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 243902 (2006)] that the anisotropic property of the system enhances the SE. We also study effects of dispersion curvatures on the changes of the photonic density of states and the appearance of the diffusion fields in the SE.

Mathieu Hautefeuille, Juan A. Hernández-Cordero

Marlan O. Scully, Shi-Yao Zhu, Muhammad Suhail Zubairy

The earliest studies on the subject of spontaneous emission from an excited atom via interaction with the vacuum modes of the radiation field go back to the early days of quantum mechanics. In view of the fundamental nature of the vacuum fluctuations, it was long thought that spontaneous emission could not be controlled. However, in 1946 Purcell noted that the spontaneous emission rate of the atom inside a resonant cavity can be substantially enhanced (or suppressed) over its free-space value. This is due to the dramatic change of the density of modes of the vacuum field in a cavity. The enhancement and suppression of spontaneous emission in resonant and off-resonant cavities were observed experimentally in the 1980s. It was also realized in the 1950s and 1960s that coherent driving fields can dramatically change the characteristics of the spontaneous emission. The Autler-Townes doublet and Mollow three-peak spectrum are the examples of such behavior. A dramatic narrowing of the spectral peaks were discovered in driven multilevel atomic systems in the early 1990s. The role of atomic coherence in quenching spontaneous emission fluctuations in the context of laser physics was studied in the 1980s, via the correlated spontaneous emission laser (CEL). In this case atomic coherence results in the correlation of two spontaneous emission noise events so that the spontaneous emission quantum noise is eliminated in the relative linewidth. Later, it was “discovered” that the spontaneous emission can be suppressed through quantum interference between decay channels. Properly stated, this was rediscovered since it was first discovered and explained by Lamb in the 1940s. If the dipoles of two transitions from one upper level to two lower levels are parallel, the spontaneous emission in an ordinary vacuum can be cancelled. In a nonuniform vacuum, e.g., a cavity, the quenching of spontaneous emission can be achieved, even for the orthogonal dipoles.