The transition rates of an isotropic quantum charged oscillator in the presence of external fields

Abstract

In this work, explicit expressions for the transition rates of an isotropic quantum charged harmonic oscillator in the vicinity of a perfectly conducting half-space under the influence of an external classical source are obtained. In the absence of external sources, it is shown that the decay rate of an initially exited state of the oscillator is a periodic function in terms of the normalized distance to the plate. The modified transition rates in the presence of external classical sources are obtained in the large-time limit indicating a contribution proportional to the squared module of the Fourier transform of the external source. In the absence of the conducting plate and external sources, the results are in agreement with the free space case. The problem is generalized to the case of a real conducting half-space.