Dynamic suppression of spontaneous emission (A)

J. Wang, Howard M. Wiseman, Z. Ficek +1 more

Vyacheslav I. Yukalov

P. R. Berman

It has been shown recently [see, for example, S.-Y. Zhu and M. O. Scully, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 388 (1996)] that a dynamical suppression of spontaneous emission can occur in a three-level system when an external field drives transitions between a metastable state and two decaying states. What is unusual in the decay scheme is that the decaying states are coupled directly by the vacuum radiation field. It is shown that the decay dynamics required for total suppression of spontaneous emission necessarily implies that the level scheme is isomorphic to a three-level \ensuremath{\Lambda} system, in which the lower two levels are both metastable and each is coupled to the decaying state. As such, the total suppression of spontaneous emission can be explained in terms of conventional dark states and coherent population trapping.

Geert L. J. A. Rikken

Suc-Kyoung Hong, Seog Woo Nam, Hyung-Jin Yang

We study the spontaneous emission from a few two-level nano-emitters placed in a leaky microcavity with Lorentzian spectral density near a critically damped regime. Collective features of the spontaneous emission are investigated by numerical analysis of the excitation dynamics when initially one nano-emitter is totally excited but we do not know which one. The results show that there are three decay rates in the excitation dynamics, two for simple exponential decays and one for damped oscillatory decay. The excitation dynamics is found to critically depend on the regime of the system. It is shown that the spontaneous emission is enhanced or suppressed depending on whether the system is in the underdamped or overdamped regime, respectively. On the other hand, the cooperative spontaneous emission is suppressed in the underdamped while it is enhanced in the overdamped regime. Furthermore, the effect of the direct inter-emitter coupling on the breaking of the cooperativeness of the spontaneous emission is shown as well.