Granular permittivity representation in extremely near-field light-matter interactions processes

Abstract: Light-matter interaction processes are significantly affected by surrounding electromagnetic environment. Dielectric materials are usually introduced into an interaction picture via their classical properties, e.g. permittivity, appearing in constitutive relations. While this approach was proven to be applicable in many occasions, it might face limitations when an emitter is situated very close to a material boundary. In this case nonlocal extend of a quantum wave function of an emitter becomes comparable with a distance to a boundary and a lattice constant of a material. Here a semi-classical model, taking into account material's granularity, is developed. In particular, spontaneous emission process in the vicinity of flat boundaries is considered. The material boundary is divided into a pair areas - far zone is modeled as a continuous phase, while the near zone next to a nonlocal emitter is represented with a discrete array of polarizable particles. This array resembles optical properties of the continuous phase under the standard homogenization procedure. Local field effects were shown to lead orders of magnitude corrections to spontaneous emission rates in the case of sub-nanometer emitter-surface separation distances. The developed mesoscopic model enables addressing few aspects of local field corrections in quite complex scenarios, where quantum ab initio techniques yet face challenges owing to involved computational complexity. The developed method could be utilized for designs of quantum sources and networks, enhanced with structured electromagnetic environment.