Breaking the Exponential: Decoherence-Driven Power-Law Spontaneous Emission in Waveguide Quantum Electrodynamics

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Authors: Stefano Longhi
Cited by: 0

Abstract

We investigate the spontaneous emission of a two-level system coupled to a photonic waveguide, showing that dynamical dephasing in the photon modes profoundly alters the decay law. In the absence of dephasing, the emitter displays conventional exponential decay followed by a long-time power-law tail -- observable only at extremely low survival probabilities. Strikingly, when dephasing is introduced, a robust power-law decay emerges already at short times, driven by photon diffusion in the dynamically disordered environment rather than spectral edge effects. These results reveal a novel, decoherence-induced mechanism for non-exponential spontaneous emission in waveguide QED platforms.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Quantum optics and atomic interactions Strong Light-Matter Interactions Quantum Mechanics and Applications

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
9 January 2026
Document type
Preprint