Abstract

We present a canonical quantization procedure for the electromagnetic field in a dispersive and lossy dielectric.^[1] Our scheme is based on an extension of the microscopic Hopfield model of a homogeneous dielectric^[2] which includes a loss mechanism represented by a reservoir of harmonic oscillators. It can be used to model any type of dielectric function which is consistent with the Kramers-Kronig relations. We diagonalize the Hamiltonian of the complete system and obtain an expression for the electromagnetic field in terms of the excitations in the dielectric, known as polaritons.

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