The photon Green's function for bounded media: Splitting property and nonequilibrium radiation laws

Abstract

The presence of a medium boundary has been a major obstacle for the theoretical description of the propagation, emission and absorption of light due to the loss of translational invariance. We present a nonequilibrium photon Green's function theory that is valid for bounded (i.e., spatially inhomogeneous) media systems and also yields an energy flow law which can be seen as a generalization of the Kirchhoff and Planck laws to nonequilibrium. With the help of this law, we discuss mechanisms of emission and optical signatures of quantum condensates. An important finding is that the components of the photon GF, which describe field-field fluctuations, decompose universally into two parts related to medium kinetics and external light sources. Thanks to their specific structure, the propagation of arbitrary (even nonclassical) light can be analyzed straightforwardly. These properties are used to demonstrate the energy flux and scattering of squeezed light incident on the medium.