Multipole interaction between atoms and their photonic environment

Macroscopic field quantization is presented for a nondispersive photonic dielectric environment, both in the absence and presence of guest atoms. Starting with a minimal-coupling Lagrangian, a careful look at functional derivatives shows how to obtain Maxwell's equations before and after choosing a suitable gauge. A Hamiltonian is derived with a multipolar interaction between the guest atoms and the electromagnetic field. Canonical variables and fields are determined and in particular the field canonically conjugate to the vector potential is identified by functional differentiation as minus the full displacement field. An important result is that inside the dielectric a dipole couples to a field that is neither the (transverse) electric nor the macroscopic displacement field. The dielectric function is different from the bulk dielectric function at the position of the dipole, so that local-field effects must be taken into account.Comment: 17 pages, to be published in Physical Review

Angular redistribution of near-infrared emission from quantum dots in 3D photonic crystals

We study the angle-resolved spontaneous emission of near-infrared light sources in 3D photonic crystals over a wavelength range from 1200 to 1550 nm. To this end PbSe quantum dots are used as light sources inside titania inverse opal photonic crystals. Strong deviations from the Lambertian emission profile are observed. An attenuation of 60 % is observed in the angle dependent radiant flux emitted from the samples due to photonic stop bands. At angles that correspond to the edges of the stop band the emitted flux is increased by up to 34 %. This increase is explained by the redistribution of Bragg-diffracted light over the available escape angles. The results are quantitatively explained by an expanded escape-function model. This model is based on diffusion theory and adapted to photonic crystals using band structure calculations. Our results are the first angular redistributions and escape functions measured at near-infrared, including telecom, wavelengths. In addition, this is the first time for this model to be applied to describe emission from samples that are optically thick for the excitation light and relatively thin for the photoluminesence light.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures (current format = single column, double spaced