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arXiv:quant-ph/0507210 · Physical Review A

Microscopic theory of spontaneous decay in a dielectric

Hao Fu, P. R. Berman

Published Aug 9, 2005• 44 citations
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Abstract

The local field correction to the spontanous decay rate of an impurity source atom embedded in a disordered dielectric is calculated to second order in the dielectric density. The result is found to differ from predictions associated with both ``virtual'' and ``real'' cavity models of this decay process. However, if the contributions from two dielectric atoms at the same position are included, the virtual cavity result is reproduced.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.72.022104

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The local field correction to the spontanous decay rate of an impurity source atom embedded in a disordered dielectric is calculated to second order in the dielectric density. The result is found to differ from predictions associated with both virtual'' and real'' cavity models of this decay process. However, if the contributions from two dielectric atoms at the same position are included, the virtual cavity result is reproduced.
We have computed the spontaneous decay rate of an atom placed inside an absorbing dielectric adopting the real cavity model. The calculations are performed applying a quantization scheme which is causal and fully consistent with the dissipation-fluctuation theorem. We have started with a full electric field operator and found that the decay rate contains only contributions from the transverse field and sensitively depends on the cavity radius - results that contradict earlier results derived on the basis of heuristic introduction of local-field correction factors.
Starting from the quantized version of Maxwell's equations for the electromagnetic field in an arbitrary linear Kramers-Kronig dielectric, the Heisenberg equations of motion for a two-level atom resonantly coupled to the radiation field in the presence of dispersive and absorbing dielectric bodies are derived. The theory is applied to the problem of spontaneous decay of excited atoms in absorbing media. The decay rate is calculated for the (Glauber-Lewenstein) real-cavity model, and a comparison with the recently studied (Clausius-Mosotti) virtual-cavity model [S. Scheel, L. Kn\"oll, D.-G. Welsch, and S. M. Barnett, Phys. Rev. A 60, 1590 (1999)] is given. It is shown that owing to nonradiative decay associated with absorption, the rate of spontaneous decay sensitively depends on the cavity radius, particularly when the atomic transition frequency approaches an absorption band of the medium. Only when the effect of absorption is fully disregarded, is the familiar local-field correction factor recovered.
Resonant classical light scattering by impurity atoms inside dielectric cubic lattices is investigated in the point-dipole limit. Modifications to resonance frequencies and linewidths are shown to be different for substitutional and interstitial impurities. Spontaneous emission rates inside dielectrics exhibit the well-known empty-cavity and Lorentz local-field factors for substitutional and interstitial atoms, respectively. The results are generalized to disordered dielectrics, indicating that the substitutional case occurs prevalently for impurity atoms.
We have calculated the effect of material absorption on the rate of spontaneous emission by an embedded atom using a macroscopic Green-function approach and a microscopic Hamiltonian method that includes reservoir damping. When local field effects are neglected, the free-space emission rate is modified by the real part of the refractive index at the transition frequency of the embedded atom. Local field effects are introduced via a local field correction factor. This modification of the spontaneous emission rate generalizes a well-known result for transparent media and is of crucial importance in assessing the degree of inhibition of spontaneous emission for frequencies close to the resonances of the dielectric.
A recently developed scheme [S. Scheel, L. Kn\"oll, and D.-G. Welsch, Phys. Rev. A 58, 700 (1998)] for quantizing the macroscopic electromagnetic field in linear dispersive and absorbing dielectrics satisfying the Kramers-Kronig relations is used to derive the quantum local-field correction for the standard virtual-sphere-cavity model. The electric and magnetic local-field operators are shown to become approximately consistent with QED only if the polarization noise is fully taken into account. It is shown that the polarization fluctuations in the local field can dramatically change the spontaneous decay rate, compared with the familiar result obtained from the classical local-field correction. In particular, the spontaneous emission rate strongly depends on the radius of the local-field virtual cavity.