Quantized Media with Absorptive Scatterers and Modified Atomic Emission Rates

TL;DR

This paper presents a quantum mechanical analysis of how nearby absorptive dielectric scatterers modify atomic emission rates, deriving analytical formulas that account for absorption and scattering effects.

Contribution

It introduces a model using dyadic Green functions to analytically quantify emission rate modifications near absorptive dielectric spheres.

Findings

Emission rates depend on distance and medium properties.

Absorption and scattering significantly influence emission modifications.

Analytical formulas enable precise predictions of emission behavior.

Abstract

Modifications in the spontaneous emission rate of an excited atom that are caused by extinction effects in a nearby dielectric medium are analyzed in a quantummechanical model, in which the medium consists of spherical scatterers with absorptive properties. Use of the dyadic Green function of the electromagnetic field near a a dielectric sphere leads to an expression for the change in the emission rate as a series of multipole contributions for which analytical formulas are obtained. The results for the modified emission rate as a function of the distance between the excited atom and the dielectric medium show the influence of both absorption and scattering processes.