Spontaneous emission and photon dynamics in dielectric microcavities

Journal Article · Sun Oct 15 04:00:00 EDT 2006 · Physical Review. A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVA.74.043806· OSTI ID:20863969

Fussell, D P; Dignam, M M ^[1]; Steel, M J ^[2]; Sterke, C Martijn de; McPhedran, R C ^[3]

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1. Department of Physics, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, K7K 3N6 (Canada)
2. RSoft Design Group, Inc., 65 O'Connor Street, Chippendale, New South Wales 2008 (Australia)
3. Centre for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), School of Physics, University of Sydney, Sydney 2006 (Australia)

We consider spontaneous emission in dielectric microcavities with multiple resonances that may overlap in both position and frequency. By projecting the Green tensor onto a set of quasimodes associated with the resonances, we derive the reduced spontaneous emission rate. To demonstrate the accuracy and computational efficiency of our approach, we model spontaneous emission in a two-dimensional photonic crystal with two coupled defects. Employing a quantum mechanical interpretation, we show that the spontaneous emission involves both direct decay into the individual quasimodes and photon transfer between the quasimodes. The quantum path interference between these different emission channels can cause the spontaneous emission rate to differ dramatically from the rate obtained by the summation over resonant line shapes. We also show how our approach can be used to determine the emission into particular quasimodes of multiple-resonance microcavities.

• OSTI ID: 20863969
• Journal Information: Physical Review. A, Journal Name: Physical Review. A Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 74; ISSN 1050-2947; ISSN PLRAAN
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
ACCURACY
CRYSTALS
DECAY
DIELECTRIC MATERIALS
EFFICIENCY
EMISSION
INTERFERENCE
PHOTONS
QUANTUM MECHANICS
RESONANCE
TENSORS
TWO-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS