Superfluorescence and cooperative frequency shift
- 1 November 1975
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review A
- Vol. 12 (5), 2068-2082
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.12.2068
Abstract
We discuss from first principles the cooperative decay of a system of two-level atoms, initially prepared in an uncorrelated excited state with population inversion , and we give the conditions under which the superfluorescence effect occurs. Describing the atomic system in terms of collective variables, we derive a master equation for the reduced atomic density operator, which gives rise both to a damping and to a time-dependent frequency shift in the dynamics of collective modes. The coupled equations of motion are solved with a self-consistent approach. It is found that the system goes through a nonexponential decay if the maximum length of the active volume is smaller than a "cooperation range" and larger than a "threshold length," in agreement with the one-mode theory. The radiation burst has a time width proportional to , and its intensity is proportional to . Specializing to a pencil-shaped volume, we find that only two atomic modes need to be considered; in this case, the average emitted radiation is all condensed in the two diffraction patterns of the opposite axial modes.
Keywords
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