Casimir Light in Dispersive Nanophotonics
Name
PhysRevLett.127.053603.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
954.12 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Sloan, Jamison
Rivera, Nicholas
Joannopoulos, John D
Soljačić, Marin
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Citation
Sloan, Jamison, Rivera, Nicholas, Joannopoulos, John D and Soljačić, Marin. 2021. "Casimir Light in Dispersive Nanophotonics." Physical Review Letters, 127 (5).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Time-varying optical media, whose dielectric properties are actively modulated in time, introduce a host of novel effects in the classical propagation of light, and are of intense current interest. In the quantum domain, time-dependent media can be used to convert vacuum fluctuations (virtual photons) into pairs of real photons. We refer to these processes broadly as "dynamical vacuum effects" (DVEs). Despite interest for their potential applications as sources of quantum light, DVEs are generally very weak, presenting many opportunities for enhancement through modern techniques in nanophotonics, such as using media which support excitations such as plasmon and phonon polaritons. Here, we present a theory of weakly modulated DVEs in arbitrary nanostructured, dispersive, and dissipative systems. A key element of our framework is the simultaneous incorporation of time-modulation and "dispersion" through time-translation-breaking linear response theory. As an example, we use our approach to propose a highly efficient scheme for generating entangled surface polaritons based on time-modulation of the optical phonon frequency of a polar insulator.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.127.053603
