IFIMAC+ICMM Joint Seminar Series focuses on cutting-edge research on condensed matter physics, bringing European speakers to our Cantoblanco Campus, this year via Zoom. You need to be subscribed to our mailing list at the link provided below to get the links to the seminar room. https://listas-correo.uam.es/sympa/subscribe/seminarios-ifimac-icmm-l.

Quasinormal modes, Purcell factors and corrected Fermi’s golden rule for spontaneous emission in absorptive and amplifying media

Stephen Hughes, Department of Physics, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Coupled loss and gain resonators can exhibit parity-time symmetry and exceptional points, and find rich applications in sensing, lasing, and quantum optics. This talk first presents an intuitive and powerful quasinormal mode theory for coupled loss and gain resonators, including a quantitatively accurate coupled mode theory [1]. As an application of the theory, we demonstrate extremely rich spectral lineshapes and Purcell factors for coupled loss-gain microdisk cavities. We then point out a fundamental flaw in currently adopted theories of spontaneous emission in such media and present a corrected Fermi’s golden rule, one that requires a fully quantum mechanical description [2].

[1] Juanjuan Ren, Sebastian Franke, Stephen Hughes, Quasinormal modes and Purcell factors of coupled loss and gain resonators near an exceptional point, e-print: arXiv:2101.07633 (2021)

[2] Sebastian Franke, Juanjuan Ren, Marten Richter, Andreas Knorr, Stephen Hughes, Fermi’s golden rule for spontaneous emission in absorptive and amplifying media, e-print: arXiv:2102.13015 (2021); Phys Rev Lett, in-press