Unified theory of consequences of spontaneous emission in a Λ system
Sophia E. Economou, Ren‐Bao Liu, Lu Jeu Sham, Duncan G. Steel · Physical Review B · 2005
In a $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ system with two nearly degenerate ground states and one excited state in an atom or quantum dot, spontaneous radiative decay can lead to a range of phenomena, including electron-photon entanglement, spontaneously generated coherence, and two-pathway decay. We show that a treatment of the radiative decay as a quantum evolution of a single physical system composed of a three-level electron subsystem and photons leads to a range of consequences depending on the electron-photon interaction and the measurement. Different treatments of the emitted photon channel the electron-photon system into a variety of final states. The theory is not restricted to the three-level system.