Controlling spontaneous emission via electronic correlations and temperature in transparent oxides

Abstract

We study the spontaneous emission of agglomerates of two-level quantum emitters embedded in a correlated transparent metal. The characteristic emission energy corresponds to the splitting between ground and excited states of a neutral, nonmagnetic molecular impurity (F color center), while correlations are due to the existence of narrow bands in the metal. This is the case of transition metal oxides with an ABO3 Perovskite structure, such as SrVO3 and CaVO3, where oxygen vacancies are responsible for the emission of visible light, while the correlated metallic nature arises from the partial filling of a band with mostly d-orbital character. For these systems we put forward an interdisciplinary, tunable mechanism to control light emission governed by electronic correlations. We show that not only there exists a critical value for the correlation strength above which the metal becomes transparent in the visible, but also that strong correlations can lead to a remarkable enhancement of the light-matter coupling. By unveiling the role of electronic correlations in spontaneous emission, our findings set the basis for the design of controllable, solid-state, single-photon sources in correlated transparent metals.