Hyperbolic Blockade: Suppression of the Photonic Density of States and the Spontaneous Emission Rate at the Interface with Conducting Medium

Surface scattering of free electrons strongly modifies the electromagnetic response near the interface. Due to the inherent anisotropy of the surface scattering that necessarily reverses the normal the interface component of the electron velocity while its tangential component may remain the same, a thin layer near a high-quality interface shows strong dielectric anisotropy. The formation of the resulting hyperbolic dispersion layers near the metal-dielectric interface strongly modifies the local density of states, and leads to orders of magnitude changes in all associated phenomena.