Computation of spontaneous emission dynamics in colored vacua

Abstract: We present an efficient time domain numerical scheme for computing spontaneous emission dynamics in colored vacua. Starting from first principles, we map the unitary evolution of a dressed two-level quantum emitter onto the problem of electromagnetic radiation from a complex harmonic oscillator under self-interaction conditions. This latter oscillator-field system can be efficiently integrated by using finite difference time domain method without the need for calculating the photonic eigenmodes of the surrounding environment. In contrast to earlier investigations, our computational framework provides a unified numerical treatment for both weak and strong coupling regimes alike. We illustrate the versatility of our scheme by considering several different examples.