2025/08/01 by Alberto Miguel-Torcal, Alejandro González-Tudela, Miguel-Torcal, Alberto +5 · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Optics (physics.optics) #Photonic Crystals and Applications #Plasmonic and Surface Plasmon Research #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Strong Light-Matter Interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2508.00465
openalex publication_date 2025/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In recent years, Born-Markov master equations based on tracing out the electromagnetic degrees of freedom have been extensively employed in the description of quantum optical phenomena originating from photon-mediated interactions in quantum emitter ensembles. The breakdown of these effective models, built on assumptions such as ensemble spectral homogeneity, an unstructured photonic density of states, and weak light-matter coupling, has also recently attracted considerable attention. Here, we investigate the accuracy of this well-established framework beyond the most conventional, and extensively explored, spontaneous emission configuration. Specifically, we consider a system comprising two coherently driven and detuned quantum emitters, embedded within a hybrid photonic-plasmonic cavity, formed by a metallic nanorod integrated into a high-refractive-index dielectric microresonator. The local density of photonic states in this structure exhibits a complex frequency dependence, making it a compelling platform for exploring photon-mediated interactions beyond the assumptions above. We benchmark this modeling approach for the quantum dynamics of the emitter pair against exact calculations based on a macroscopic field quantization formalism, providing an illustrative assessment of its validity in significantly structured and dispersive photonic environments. Our analysis reveals four distinct regimes of laser driving and frequency splitting that lead to markedly different levels of accuracy in the effective model.