Spontaneous emission of a moving atom in the presence of magnetodielectric material: A relativistic approach

Abstract

In this paper, based on a canonical quantization scheme, we study the effect of the relativistic motion of an excited atom on its decay rate in the presence of absorbing and dispersive media. For this purpose, we introduce an appropriate Lagrangian and describe the center-of-mass dynamical variables by the Dirac field. We obtain the Hamiltonian of the system in a multipolar form and calculate the motion equations of the system in the Schr\"odinger picture. We find that the decay rate and the quantum electrodynamics level shift of the moving atom can be expressed in terms of the imaginary part of the classical Green tensor and the center-of-mass velocity of the atom.