English

Breaking the Exponential: Decoherence-Driven Power-Law Spontaneous Emission in Waveguide Quantum Electrodynamics

Quantum Physics 2026-01-12 v1 Optics

Abstract

We investigate the spontaneous emission of a two-level system coupled to a photonic waveguide, showing that dynamical dephasing in the photon modes profoundly alters the decay law. In the absence of dephasing, the emitter displays conventional exponential decay followed by a long-time power-law tail -- observable only at extremely low survival probabilities. Strikingly, when dephasing is introduced, a robust power-law decay emerges already at short times, driven by photon diffusion in the dynamically disordered environment rather than spectral edge effects. These results reveal a novel, decoherence-induced mechanism for non-exponential spontaneous emission in waveguide QED platforms.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.05884,
  title  = {Breaking the Exponential: Decoherence-Driven Power-Law Spontaneous Emission in Waveguide Quantum Electrodynamics},
  author = {Stefano Longhi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.05884},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

15 pages, 4 figures, Supplemental Material not included. Accepted for publication in Laser & Photon. Review

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:57:53.222Z