Expand this Topic clickable element to expand a topic
Skip to content
Optica Publishing Group

Contribution of evanescent waves to the far field: the atomic point of view

Not Accessible

Your library or personal account may give you access

Abstract

Evanescent modes of the electromagnetic field are seldom invoked in conventional far-field optics, as their contribution far from the source (a few wavelengths) is negligible. Contradicting this fact, in recent theoretical works, based on a particular decomposition of the free-space Green tensor, it has been asserted that evanescent waves do indeed contribute to the far field, where they appear as an additional 1/r component of the field. We provide an explicit demonstration that evanescent modes do not contribute to the power radiated to the far field by any dipolar source. First we derive an expression for the free-space field susceptibility in which contributions from evanescent and homogeneous modes are separated, and then we use linear response theory to compute the decay rate for an atomic dipole in vacuum.

© 2000 Optical Society of America

Full Article  |  PDF Article
More Like This
Do evanescent waves contribute to the far field?

Emil Wolf and John T. Foley
Opt. Lett. 23(1) 16-18 (1998)

Far-field contribution of evanescent modes to the electromagnetic Green tensor

Andrei V. Shchegrov and P. Scott Carney
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 16(10) 2583-2584 (1999)

Subwavelength depth resolution in near-field microscopy

David G. Fischer
Opt. Lett. 25(20) 1529-1531 (2000)

Cited By

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription

Equations (15)

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Equations are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription

Select as filters


Select Topics Cancel
© Copyright 2024 | Optica Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved