Superradiant pulses and directed angular momentum states

Abstract

We investigate the statistical properties of superradiant pulses emitted by a system of many atoms. By using a representation of the atomic density operator in terms of directed angular-momentum states (which are also known as atomic coherent states), we find that the statistical behavior of the atoms is formally equivalent to that of a harmonic oscillator subject to linear amplitude amplification and driven by Gaussian white noise. The emitted light pulses are then found to exhibit very large quantum fluctuations for atomic initial states corresponding to complete or nearly complete excitation. For all other atomic initial states the superradiant pulses show classical behavior.