First-Principle Investigation Of Near-Field Energy Transfer Between Localized Quantum Emitters in Solids

We present a predictive and general approach to investigate near-field nonradiative resonant energy transfer (NRET) between localized defects in semiconductors, which couples first principle electronic structure calculations and a nonrelativistic quantum electrodynamics description of photons in the weak-coupling regime [1]. Understanding NRET processes is crucial to the design of a proposed ultra-dense optical memory platform [1] that exploits energy transfer from rare earth impurities to point-defects in a solid host to create long lasting excitations. As an example, we investigate NRET from a magnetic dipolar source, representing a rare earth impurity, to an F center in MgO and show that, in the near field, long-lived spin non conserving excitations can be created in the F center [1], at distances relevant to the design of photonic devices. Further, we define a descriptor for coherent energy transfer to predict distances and geometrical configurations of emitters enabling long-lived excitations, and we provide several design rules for ultra-high dense classical optical memories [1], as well as quantum memories and networks.

[1] S. Chattaraj, S. Guha, and G. Galli, “First-Principle Investigation Of Near-Field Energy Transfer Between Localized Quantum Emitters in Solids”, arXiv:2310.10028(2023).