Constructing “Designer Atoms” via Resonant Graphene-Induced Lamb Shifts
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Author(s)
Chang, Cyuan-Han
Rivera, Nicholas H.
Joannopoulos, John
Soljacic, Marin
Kaminer, Ido Efraim
Date Issued
December 2017
Journal
ACS Photonics
Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)
Citation
Chang, Cyuan-Han et al. “Constructing ‘Designer Atoms’ via Resonant Graphene-Induced Lamb Shifts.” ACS Photonics 4, 12 (October 2017): 3098–3105 © 2017 American Chemical Society
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
The properties of an electron in an atom or molecule are not fixed; rather they are a function of the optical environment of the emitter. Not only is the spontaneous emission a function of the optical environment, but also the underlying wave functions and energy levels, which are modified by the potential induced by quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. In free space, this modification of atomic levels and wave functions is very weak and generally hard to observe due to the prevalence of other perturbations like fine structure. Here, we explore the possibility of highly tailorable electronic structure by exploiting large Lamb shifts in tunable electromagnetic environments such as graphene, whose optical properties are dynamically controlled via doping. The Fermi energy can be chosen so that the Lamb shift is very weak, but it can also be chosen so that the shifts become more prominent than the fine structure of the atom and even potentially the Coulomb interaction with the nucleus. Potential implications of this idea include being able to electronically shift an unfavorable emitter structure into a favorable one, a new approach to probe near-field physics in fluorescence, and a way to access regimes of physics where vacuum fluctuations are not a weak perturbation but rather the dominant physics. Keywords: graphene plasmonics; Lamb shift; light-matter interactions; quantum electrodynamics
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1021/ACSPHOTONICS.7B00731
