Abstract

Radiative properties of oscillating dipoles are known to depend on the environmental in which the dipoles are. For example, reflecting boundaries such as optical cavities can be used to enhance or supress the fluorescent decay of excited atoms¹ or molecules.² Such effects can often be understood in terms of interference between the part of the dipole radiation that is directly emitted and the part that is reflected by the boundary. However, for the case of spontaneous emission it is difficult to reflect a significant part of the emission with the proper phase back onto the radiating dipole and hence it is difficult to observe large changes in the excited-state lifetime.

© 1994 IEEE