Spontaneous emission interference in negative-refractive-index waveguides

TL;DR

This paper investigates how negative-refractive-index waveguides influence spontaneous emission, revealing enhanced mode density and interference effects that differ from positive index waveguides, with potential applications in quantum optics.

Contribution

It demonstrates that negative-refractive-index waveguides support unique surface guided modes and significantly enhance spontaneous emission and interference effects compared to traditional dielectric waveguides.

Findings

Surface guided modes are supported in thin negative-refractive-index waveguides.

Spontaneous emission into guided modes is enhanced by several orders of magnitude.

Strong emission interference can be induced between orthogonal dipole transitions.

Abstract

The spontaneous decay of a V-type three-level atom placed in a negative-refractive-index waveguide is analyzed. We find that in thin waveguides, highly efficient surface guided modes are supported, which do not occur in positive index waveguides. In addition, at low absorption, the mode density and thus spontaneous emission into particular regular guided modes is enhanced by several orders of magnitude as compared to regular dielectric waveguides. The asymmetries between emission into the different modes and the enhancement of particular guided modes allow to induce strong spontaneous-emission interference between transitions with orthogonal transition dipole moments.