Title:
Spontaneous Emission Faster Than Stimulated Emission
Eli Yablonovitch & Ming Wu
Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences Dept.
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
For almost 50 years, stimulated emission has been stronger and far more important than
spontaneous emission. Indeed spontaneous emission has been looked down upon, as a weak
effect. Now a new science of enhanced spontaneous emission is emerging, that will make
spontaneous emission stronger and faster than any possible stimulated emission. This new
science depends upon the use of nanoscale metallic optical elements, as antennas for spontaneous
emission.
We call this antenna-enhanced effect “Spontaneous Hyper-Emission” (SHE). The overall
increase in spontaneous emission rate can be up to 8 orders of magnitude, but will ultimately be
limited the optical anomalous skin effect, which imposes extra Ohmic dissipation as quantum
dots approach within nano-meters of metal surfaces. Currently we are using bare “naked”
InGaAsP quantum dots, which have the remarkable property of radiating well, even without
surface passivation, and even in direct contact with metallic optical antenna electrodes.
We will present the evidence for 35 spontaneous emission enhancement by optical
antenna.