Behavior of three modes of decay channels and their self-energies of elliptic dielectric microcavity

TL;DR

This study investigates how the geometry of an elliptic dielectric microcavity influences the Lamb shift and decay channels, revealing transitions among whispering-gallery, stable-bouncing-ball, and unstable-bouncing-ball modes.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of the relationship between cavity eccentricity, decay modes, and self-energies using phase space distributions and transition classification.

Findings

Lamb shift size depends on boundary geometry and exhibits a global transition with eccentricity.

Similarity between Husimi distributions increases as differences in self-energies decrease.

Transitions among decay modes are classified into three types based on phase space analysis.

Abstract

The Lamb shift (self-energy) of an elliptic dielectric microcavity is studied. We show that the size of the Lamb shift, which is a small energy shift due to the system-environment coupling in the quantum regime, is dependent on the geometry of the boundary conditions. It shows a global transition depending on the eccentricity of the ellipsis. These transitions can be classified into three types of decay channels known as whispering-gallery modes, stable-bouncing-ball modes, and unstable-bouncing-ball modes. These modes are manifested through the Poincar\'{e} surface of section with the Husimi distribution function in classical phase space. It is found that the similarity (measured in Bhattacharyya distance) between the Husimi distributions below critical lines of two different modes increases as the difference of their self-energies decreases when the quality factors of the modes are on the same order of magnitude.