Surface polariton effects in spontaneous emission

Abstract

Analytic expressions of a previous paper, for the width of the excited state of an atom in presence of a dielectric interface are integrated numerically for two different types of material medium viz. a metal and the one involving phonorus such as GaP. In each case there is a very large transition probability that the atom decays with the emission of an appropriate surface polariton. It is also found that the diffuse contribution to the width closely related to the irradiated power is much smaller than the surface polariton contribution. The influence of the damping of the dielectric function on the width of the atomic states as well as the surface plasmon-polariton contribution to frequency shifts for a metal are studied.