Spatial coherence of light emitted by ensembles of emitters coupled to resonant surfaces

Abstract

While spatially coherent emission has been experimentally observed for several photoluminescent devices composed of metallic nanostructures, no model is currently able to compute the spatial coherence function of the emitted fields, and thus to explain its origin. We introduce a model of light emission by thermalized ensembles of emitters which connects the coherence of the fields at two positions to the power absorbed by the system when illuminated by two sources. We can apply it to the study of the spatial coherence properties of the light emitted by a layer of molecular dyes deposited on top of a silver layer.