Energy transfer between localized emitters in photonic cavities from first principles

Radiative and nonradiative resonant couplings between defects are ubiquitous phenomena in photonic devices used in classical and quantum information technology applications. In this work, we present a first-principles approach to enable quantitative predictions of the energy transfer between defects in photonic cavities, beyond the dipole-dipole approximation and including the many-body nature of the electronic states. As an example, we discuss the energy transfer from a dipolelike emitter to an <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><a:mi>F</a:mi></a:math> center in MgO in a spherical cavity. We show that the cavity can be used to controllably enhance or suppress specific spin-flip and spin-conserving transitions. Specifically, we predict that an ∼10–100 enhancement in the resonant energy transfer rate can be gained in the case of the <b:math xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><b:mi>F</b:mi></b:math> center in MgO at ∼10 nm distances from a dipolar source, using rather moderate cavity with quality factor <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><c:mi>Q</c:mi></c:math> ∼ 400. We also show that a similar suppression in the transfer rate can be achieved by off-tuning the cavity resonance relative to the emitter transition energy. The framework presented here is general and readily applicable to a wide range of devices where localized emitters are embedded in microspheres, core-shell nanoparticles, and dielectric Mie resonators. Hence, our approach paves the way to predict how to control energy transfer in quantum memories and in ultrahigh-density optical memories, and in a variety of quantum information platforms.