We investigate cooperative fluorescence in a dilute cloud of strongly driven two-level emitters. Starting from the Heisenberg equations of motion, we compute the first-order scattering corrections to the saturation of the excited-state population and to the resonance-fluorescence spectrum, which both require going beyond the state-of-the-art linear-optics approach to describe collective phenomena. A dipole blockade is observed due to long-range dipole-dipole coupling that vanishes at stronger driving fields. Furthermore, we compute the inelastic component of the light scattered by a cloud of many atoms and find that the Mollow triplet is affected by cooperativity. In a lobe around the forward direction, the inelastic Mollow triplet develops a spectral asymmetry, observable under experimental conditions.
We investigate cooperative fluorescence in a dilute cloud of strongly driven two-level emitters. Starting from the Heisenberg equations of motion, we compute the first-order scattering corrections to the saturation of the excited-state population and to the resonance-fluorescence spectrum, which both require going beyond the state-of-the-art linear-optics approach to describe collective phenomena. A dipole blockade is observed due to long-range dipole-dipole coupling that vanishes at stronger driving fields. Furthermore, we compute the inelastic component of the light scattered by a cloud of many atoms and find that the Mollow triplet is affected by cooperativity. In a lobe around the forward direction, the inelastic Mollow triplet develops a spectral asymmetry, observable under experimental conditions.
The collective scattering of light by a large number of coupled scatterers yields a rich many-body physics, yet treating such a problem in the quantum regime is a challenge.In this thesis, we consider a large atomic cloud in free space and driven by a monochromatic light, where the vacuum modes induce long-range dipole-dipole interactions.In order to study clouds of hundreds of particles, higher order correlation terms are neglected, keeping only quantum correlations between pair of atoms: this allows to reduce the number of degrees of freedom from 2 2N in the full quantum model to N 2 .Most of the works in the literature on dipole-dipole interactions have been performed in the linear optics limit, and our techniques allow to compare classical to beyond-semi-classical results.In particular, superradiance and subradiance have been reported in the decay dynamics of the cloud.Differently, by considering a system in the ground state and switching on the pump, we show that superradiance is also present in the Rabi oscillations at a rate obtained from using a single-dipole model for the radiated intensity.A frequency shift in the Rabi oscillations is also reported, which can be interpreted, in a linear dispersion theory, as a signature of a collective multimode vacuum Rabi splitting.While the classical dipoles model captures correctly the dynamics in the low-intensity regime, it fails for higher saturation, where semi-classical methods can be applied successfully.In particular, we observe a quantum subradiant decay in the intensity of the radiated field in the saturated regime.Furthermore, considering the decay dynamics starting from an initially strongly driven cloud, we observed that the states with n < N/2 excited atoms decays much slower than the ones with n > N/2: in other words, the upper part of the Dicke ladder is characterized by a superradiant emission, and the lower part by a subradiant one.Finally, investigating the fluorescence spectrum, we obtained quantum cooperative effects that modify the steady-state spectrum: additional sidebands at twice the Rabi frequency for the system driven at resonance and, out of resonance, an asymmetry in the peaks at the generalized Rabi frequency, and for all detection angles.We also present preliminary results of a sensor model that can capture the time evolution of the spectrum in the decay dynamics, a situation that the quantum regression theorem fails to describe.Several of these results were discussed in parallel with experimental data obtained by an experimental group of collaborators, and others aim to guide future experiments.
Scattering of classical light by atomic clouds induces photon-mediated effective long-range interactions between the atoms and leads to cooperative effects even at low atomic densities. We introduce a simulation technique that allows us to investigate the quantum regime of the dynamics of large clouds of atoms. We show that the fluorescence spectrum of the cloud can be used to probe genuine quantum cooperative effects. Signatures of these effects are the occurrence, and the scaling behavior, of additional sidebands at twice the frequency of the classical Mollow sidebands, as well as an asymmetry of the Mollow triplet.
We investigate the resonance fluorescence features of a small ensemble of closely packed and moderately laser-pumped two-level emitters at resonance. The mean distance between any two-level radiators is smaller than the corresponding emission wavelength, such that the dipole-dipole interactions are not negligible. We have found that under the secular approximation, the collective resonance fluorescence spectrum consists of 2 N + 1 spectral lines, where N is the number of emitters from the sample. The 2 N spectral sidebands, symmetrically located around the generalized Rabi frequency with respect to the central line at the laser frequency, are distinguishable if the dipole-dipole coupling strength is larger than the collective spontaneous decay rate. This way, one can estimate the radiators number within the ensemble via measuring of the spontaneously scattered collective resonance fluorescence spectrum. Contrarily, if the dipole-dipole coupling is of the order of or smaller than the cooperative spontaneous decay rate, but still non-negligible, the spectrum turns into a Mollow-like fluorescence spectrum, where the two sidebands' spectral lines broaden proportional to the dipole-dipole coupling strength. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
The collective scattering of light by a large number of coupled scatterers yields a rich many-body physics, yet treating such a problem in the quantum regime is a challenge. In this thesis, we consider a large atomic cloud in free space and driven by a monochromatic light, where the vacuum modes induce long-range dipole-dipole interactions. In order to study clouds of hundreds of particles, higher order correlation terms are neglected, keeping only quantum correlations between pair of atoms: this allows to reduce the number of degrees of freedom from 22N in the full quantum model to N2. Most of the works in the literature on dipole-dipole interactions have been performed in the linear optics limit, and our techniques allow to compare classical to beyond-semi-classical results. In particular, superradiance and subradiance have been reported in the decay dynamics of the cloud. Differently, by considering a system in the ground state and switching on the pump, we show that superradiance is also present in the Rabi oscillations at a rate obtained from using a single-dipole model for the radiated intensity. A frequency shift in the Rabi oscillations is also reported, which can be interpreted, in a linear dispersion theory, as a signature of a collective multimode vacuum Rabi splitting. While the classical dipoles model captures correctly the dynamics in the low-intensity regime, it fails for higher saturation, where semi-classical methods can be applied successfully. In particular, we observe a quantum subradiant decay in the intensity of the radiated field in the saturated regime. Furthermore, considering the decay dynamics starting from an initially strongly driven cloud, we observed that the states with n < N/2 excited atoms decays much slower than the ones with n > N/2: in other words, the upper part of the Dicke ladder is characterized by a superradiant emission, and the lower part by a subradiant one. Finally, investigating the fluorescence spectrum, we obtained quantum cooperative effects that modify the steady-state spectrum: additional sidebands at twice the Rabi frequency for the system driven at resonance and, out of resonance, an asymmetry in the peaks at the generalized Rabi frequency, and for all detection angles. We also present preliminary results of a sensor model that can capture the time evolution of the spectrum in the decay dynamics, a situation that the quantum regression theorem fails to describe. Several of these results were discussed in parallel with experimental data obtained by an experimental group of collaborators, and others aim to guide future experiments.
Cooperative scattering has been the subject of intense research in the last years. In this article, we discuss the concept of cooperative scattering from a broad perspective. We briefly review the various collective effects that occur when light interacts with an ensemble of atoms. We show that some effects that have been recently discussed in the context of ‘single-photon superradiance’, or cooperative scattering in the linear-optics regime, can also be explained by ‘standard optics’, i.e. using macroscopic quantities such as the susceptibility or the diffusion coefficient. We explain why some collective effects depend on the atomic density, and others on the optical depth. In particular, we show that, for a large and dilute atomic sample driven by a far-detuned laser, the decay of the fluorescence, which exhibits superradiant and subradiant dynamics, depends only on the on-resonance optical depth. We also discuss the link between concepts that are independently studied in the quantum-optics community and in the mesoscopic-physics community. We show that the coupled-dipole model predicts a departure from Ohm’s law for the diffuse light, that incoherent multiple scattering can induce a saturation of fluorescence and we also show the similarity between the weak-localization correction to the diffusion coefficient and the inaccuracy of Lorentz local field correction to the susceptibility.
We analyze the temporal response of the fluorescence light that is emitted from a dense gas of cold atoms driven by a laser. When the average interatomic distance is comparable to the wavelength of the photons scattered by the atoms, the system exhibits strong dipolar interactions and collective dissipation. We solve the exact dynamics of small systems with different geometries and show how these collective features are manifest in the scattered light properties such as the photon emission rate, the power spectrum and the second-order correlation function. By calculating these quantities beyond the weak (linear) driving limit, we make progress in understanding the signatures of collective behavior in these many-body systems. Furthermore, we shed light on the role of disorder and averaging on the resonance fluorescence, of direct relevance for recent experimental efforts that aim at the exploration of many-body effects in dipole–dipole interacting gases of atoms.