Nanofiber-mediated chiral radiative coupling between two atoms

TL;DR

This paper explores how nanofiber-mediated chiral interactions influence the radiative coupling and collective emission of two atoms with polarized dipoles, revealing direction-dependent emission rates and state-dependent emission modifications.

Contribution

It provides a systematic derivation of the master equation and decay coefficients for atoms near a nanofiber, highlighting the chiral nature of radiative interactions with detailed numerical analysis.

Findings

Radiative coupling is direction-dependent due to chirality.

Atomic emission rates are influenced by initial states and atom-fiber distance.

Chiral interactions modify collective atomic emission behaviors.

Abstract

We investigate the radiative coupling between two two-level atoms with arbitrarily polarized dipoles in the vicinity of a nanofiber. We present a systematic derivation for the master equation, the single- and cross-atom decay coefficients, and the dipole-dipole interaction coefficients for the atoms interacting with the vacuum of the field in the guided and radiation modes of the nanofiber. We study numerically the case where the atomic dipoles are circularly polarized. In this case, the rate of emission depends on the propagation direction, that is, the radiative interaction between the atoms is chiral. We examine the time evolution of the atoms for different initial states. We calculate the fluxes and mean numbers of photons spontaneously emitted into guided modes in the positive and negative directions of the fiber axis. We show that the chiral radiative coupling modifies the collective emission of the atoms. We observe that the modifications strongly depend on the initial state of the atomic system, the radiative transfer direction, the distance between the atoms, and the distance from the atoms to the fiber surface.