| The goal of this work was to determine how to account for the local field created by an atom emitting in a dielectric medium. To accomplish this task, water-in-oil emulsions (reverse micelles) were fabricated with a single fluorescent dye molecule in the water phase and a mixture of two organic solvents as the oil phase. Unlike previous experiments, variations in quenching of spontaneous emission due to interaction between fluorescent species and the host were eliminated by protecting the dye with a surfactant monolayer. Hence, changes in lifetime were due solely to changes in refractive index and not solvent or environmental effects. The results were compared with quantum optics formulations, and the effect of local fields was determined. For the system studied in this thesis, the core/shell local field correction gave the best fit to the spontaneous emission and refractive index data obtained. |
