Spontaneous Emission of a Two-level Atom in Photonic Crystals

摘要

We investigate spontaneous emission from a two-level atom embedded in photonic crystals. Due to the photon localization and the quantum interference between the two dressed states, some changes of the radiation field happen, and the energy is transferred among the excited atom, the localized field, the propagating field and the diffusion field. If there is a localized field, it appears quasi-oscillation behaviors of the population evolution in the excited level. If there isn't a localized field, it appears no quasi-oscillation. Moreover, there have some steady-state trapped atom populations in the excited level, and the spontaneous emission spectrum near the forbidden gap edge is different from that in the vacuum. All these characteristics depend not only on the relative position of the excited level from the band-edge but also on the photon density of states (or the band-edge smoothing parameter) near the band edge.