Interference without interference: Directional properties of spontaneous emission

A. Orlowski and W. Zakowicz

A fully quantum-mechanical description of the spontaneous emission from an excited two-level atom placed in front of the two slit interferometer is given. Global modes of the electromagnetic field in a two slit system are derived within the Kirchhoff-Huygens diffraction approximation, serving as a base for the field quantization. The standard Fermi’s golden rule, supplemented by a factor coming from the nontrivial mode structure caused by the presence of the two slit interferometer, is used to show that interference results from the position dependent coupling between the atom and different field modes of the system.

Opt. Spectrosc. 87, 500 (1999)