Quantum emitters on a crossroad

A free person has a choice, also quantum particles do with a slight difference on decision making. Quantum emitters decide whether to shine or not according to the number of available options –larger number of available states yields faster emission, according to the Fermi golden rule. However, what is going to happen if those states depend on all the surrounding reality, like in life, where we should account for too many things in order to make a right decision?

The collaboration between scientists in the Experimental Biophysics & Nanotechnology research group in the Department of Physics at King’s College London (Dr Pavel Ginzburg and Prof Anatoly V. Zayats) and from UMass Lowell, United States (Prof Viktor Podolskiy and Mr  Brian Wells ) led to a breakthrough in understanding of those fundamental questions by looking deep inside the quantum dynamics of nanostructured media – metamaterials. Metamaterials, artificially created tiny-small composites, enable novel type of nonlocal electromagnetic states, mostly hidden from our everyday light but accessible to quantum counterparts of decision makers - fluorescent atoms or molecules. It was shown that these nonlocal states increase the choices and, respectively, speed-up the decay of the quantum objects. Their paper on ‘Light emission in nonlocal plasmonic metamaterials’, has been published in Faraday Discussions on Nanoplasmonics.

If you would like any further information, please contact Dr Pavel Ginzburg on: pavel.ginzburg@kcl.ac.uk

http://pavel.ginzburg.info/