Spontaneous emission near non-trivial conducting surfaces

Full text: One of the remarkable phenomena associated with the zero-point fluctuations of the electromagnetic field is the spontaneous emission, which accounts for the emission of photons by an excited atom placed in vacuum. As discovered by Purcell in the 1940's, the spontaneous emission rate depends not only on the atomic properties but also on the nearby bodies. This should be expected once the electromagnetic field modes are affected by the boundary conditions imposed by these bodies. We begin our presentation reviewing a method which establishes a striking connection between the spontaneous emission of an excited atom and the classical radiation emitted by an oscillating real dipole. In fact, it can be shown, the influence of the neighbouring bodies is the same in both cases. We use this approach to evaluate the influence of an infinite conducting plane with a circular aperture on the spontaneous emission rate of the atom. This geometry will be particularly interesting if the atom is placed on the axis of symmetry of the hole and if it is predominantly polarizable in this axis, once this configuration is one of the those rare configurations that give rise to repulsive dispersive interactions. It would be very interesting to establish some connection between how the spontaneous emission rate of an excited atom is influenced by the presence of material bodies and the attractive or repulsive character of the dispersive force between that atom (in its ground state) and those material bodies. (author)