Abstract

Semiconductor devices tend to get smaller to the size of optical wavelengths. Also, emission of light with non-classical properties from such devices is reported [1]. In view of these developments, there is a need for a full quantum mechanical theory of the interaction of the electromagnetic field and the electrons in the active layer of such devices. Existing treatments do not fully consider the difficulties associated with the quantization of the electromagnetic field. One of the main problems with the quantization of the electromagnetic field in such structures is the fact that the modes of the field are ill-defined: there is large outcoupling. Such problems can be overcome if one encloses the system in a large enough box, but this presents us with problems regarding the radiation condition at infinity, i.e. irradiated waves do not return to an open structure. We avoid such problems by dealing with the full field operators and a classical Green’s tensor which takes into account the wave guiding and diffraction aspects of the dielectric device geometry. Our method allows direct calculation of spontaneous emission coefficients, spectra of emitted radiation, radation-pattern expectation-values and photon-correlation functions anywhere in space and time. Here we will show first results of such spectra from spontaneous emission in a few simple geometries: a bulk semiconductor, a quantum well and a quantum wire. We use the free field Green’s function, which implies exclusion of polarization effects and isotropy of the medium. This simplifies the calculations considerably.

© 1998 IEEE