Lecture 13:

Setting

Incoherent Perturbations and Spontaneous Emission

Dipole interaction

excitation or de-excitation prob.

transition dipole moment

is the density of the radiation field

If there is a continuous frequency distribution of radiation fields: we sum up all transition probabilities by an integral:

Using the same approximation as in deriving Fermis golden rule

For a random orientation of the field polarization:

So after averaging over random field polarizations, the transition rate is

And obviously

Einsteins A and B coefficients

spontaneous emission term

n m

excited state
stimulated emission term

ground state

At thermal equilibrium:

At thermal equilibrium:

But Plancks blackbody formula suggests that we must have:

Compare this with what we have from the previous slide:

Einstein concluded:

(we knew from

Finally, (dipole-interaction-induced) spontaneous emission rate:

Ratio of spontaneous emission rate and stimulated emission rate:

At thermal equilibrium

At T = 300 K, spontaneous rate is dominant for nm > 10

13

Hz

Indeed, in these cases much less population is on the excited state, and hence spontaneous emission must be fast to maintain the equilibrium.

Example: Spontaneous emission rate of a point charge attached to a spring

assume a harmonic spring with frequency , moving along the x direction

assuming n > m

Consider then the rate for n n -1 spontaneous emission

quantum number of the state doing spontaneous emission

Consider the spontaneous emission of the ground state, n=0 and hence A = 0. This is consistent with the fact that the ground state cannot emit anything further

Example: Spontaneous emission rate of

in the case of the hydrogen atom

Computing the transition dipole associated with 210100:

Z component is done in last lecture: X component Y component

continued on the next slide

Continuing the previous slide

Hence,

Conclusions:
When a system is subject to incoherent driving fields with a continuous distribution of driving frequencies, we derived a transition rate formula that can be regarded as another form of Fermis golden rule. Note however, if the driving field is coherent (instead of a thermal radiation field); that is, if fields with different frequencies have definite phase relations, then we need to add transition amplitudes rather than the transition probabilities. Based on Einsteins A & B coefficients, we derived an expression for the spontaneous emission rate. Spontaneous emission is induced by the coupling of a quantum system with the vacuum fluctuations of electromagnetic fields. As such, both spontaneous emission and stimulated emission have the same origin: coupling of a system with electromagnetic fields. The existence of spontaneous emission means that it is almost impossible to truly isolate a system from electromagnetic fields. So in various quantum technologies it all comes down to the competition between different time scales