dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaSpontaneous decay of an excited atom in an absorbing dielectric
| Authors | S. Scheel, L. Knoll, D. G. Welsch |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | quant-ph/9904015 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9904015 |
| DOI | 10.1103/PhysRevA.60.4094 |
Abstract
Starting from the quantized version of Maxwell's equations for the electromagnetic field in an arbitrary linear Kramers-Kronig dielectric, spontaneous decay of the excited state of a two-level atom embedded in a dispersive and absorbing medium is studied and the decay rate is calculated. The calculations are performed for both the (Clausius-Mosotti) virtual cavity model and the (Glauber-Lewenstein) real cavity model. It is shown that owing to nonradiative decay associated with absorption the rate of spontaneous decay sensitively depends on the cavity radius when the atomic transition frequency approaches an absorption band of the medium. Only when the effect of absorption is fully disregarded, then the familiar local-field correction factors are recovered.
{
"annotation_id": "682db9f5-456c-4955-ad19-23d4fb8cbb89",
"date_created": "2026-03-02T18:02:44.902000Z",
"date_modified": "2026-03-02T18:02:44.902000Z",
"file_hash": "d407a3cbd96dafc57ea841e2fe45e87a7eded017b6e0e6cb2e58a3ef67473b83",
"private": false,
"record": {
"abstract": "Starting from the quantized version of Maxwell\u0027s equations for the\nelectromagnetic field in an arbitrary linear Kramers-Kronig dielectric,\nspontaneous decay of the excited state of a two-level atom embedded in a\ndispersive and absorbing medium is studied and the decay rate is calculated.\nThe calculations are performed for both the (Clausius-Mosotti) virtual cavity\nmodel and the (Glauber-Lewenstein) real cavity model. It is shown that owing to\nnonradiative decay associated with absorption the rate of spontaneous decay\nsensitively depends on the cavity radius when the atomic transition frequency\napproaches an absorption band of the medium. Only when the effect of absorption\nis fully disregarded, then the familiar local-field correction factors are\nrecovered.",
"arxiv_id": "quant-ph/9904015",
"authors": [
"S. Scheel",
"L. Knoll",
"D. G. Welsch"
],
"categories": [
"quant-ph"
],
"doi": "10.1103/PhysRevA.60.4094",
"title": "Spontaneous decay of an excited atom in an absorbing dielectric",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9904015"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
"source": {
"execution_id": "af64c852-57e9-41ab-aadb-12f23363cd87",
"id": "arXiv Dataset IDs",
"type": "Model",
"variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
"version": "0.1.0"
},
"user_id": 1000002
}