First-Principle Investigation Of Near-Field Energy Transfer Between Localized Quantum Emitters in Solids

We present a predictive and general approach to investigate near-field energy transfer processes between localized defects in semiconductors, which couples first principle electronic structure calculations and a nonrelativistic quantum electrodynamics description of photons in the weak-coupling regime. We apply our approach to investigate an exemplar point defect in an oxide, the F center in MgO, and we show that the energy transfer from a magnetic source, e.g., a rare earth impurity, to the vacancy can lead to spin non conserving long-lived excitation that are dominant processes in the near field, at distances relevant to the design of photonic devices and ultra-high dense memories. We also define a descriptor for coherent energy transfer to predict geometrical configurations of emitters to enable long-lived excitations, that are useful to design optical memories in semiconductor and insulators.