Inverse design for full control of spontaneous emission using light emitting scattering optical elements.

Full control of spontaneous emission is essential in various fields of optics. This work presents an inverse designed light-emitting scattering optical element that includes full control of spontaneously emitted photons (i.e., enhancement at a central frequency and suppression at neighboring frequencies) and directionality of the output beam. This is achieved by embedding a one-dimensional optical active element inside a cluster of square shaped gallium arsenide dielectric rods whose positions are optimized by a genetic algorithm. Large spontaneous emission enhancement of > 70 is predicted at the transition wavelength if high-quality sources are employed. Moreover, neighboring wavelengths are simultaneously suppressed over 10 times. Finally, the radiated beam is highly collimated to only 6 degrees and contains 30 times the energy emitted by the source placed in free space.