Spontaneous emission of electric and magnetic dipoles in the vicinity of thin and thick metal

Strong modification of spontaneous emission of Eu(3+) ions placed in close vicinity to thin and thick gold and silver films was clearly demonstrated in a microscope setup separately for electric and magnetic dipole transitions. We have shown that the magnetic transition was very sensitive to the thickness of the gold substrate and behaved distinctly different from the electric transition. The observations were described theoretically based on the dyadic Green's function approach for layered media and explained through modified image models for the near and far-field emissions. We established that there exists a "near-field event horizon", which demarcates the distance from the metal at which the dipole emission is taken up exclusively in the near field.