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arXiv:2110.08380 · Physical Review Research

Dicke Superradiance in Ordered Lattices: Dimensionality Matters

Eric Sierra, Stuart J. Masson, Ana Asenjo-Garcı́a

Published Jun 13, 2022• 68 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Dicke superradiance in ordered atomic arrays is a phenomenon where atomic synchronization gives rise to a burst in photon emission. This superradiant burst only occurs if there is one---or just a few---dominant decay channels. For a fixed atom number, this happens only below a critical interatomic distance. Here we show that array dimensionality is the determinant factor that drives superradiance. In two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) arrays, superradiance occurs due to constructive interference, which grows stronger with atom number. This leads to a critical distance that scales sublogarithmically with atom number in 2D, and as a power law in 3D. In one-dimensional arrays, superradiance occurs due to destructive interference that effectively switches off certain decay channels, yielding a critical distance that saturates with atom number. Our results provide a guide to explore many-body decay in state-of-the art experimental setups.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.4.023207

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Dicke superradiance in ordered atomic arrays is a phenomenon where atomic synchronization gives rise to a burst in photon emission. This superradiant burst only occurs if there is one---or just a few---dominant decay channels. For a fixed atom number, this happens only below a critical interatomic distance. Here we show that array dimensionality is the determinant factor that drives superradiance. In two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) arrays, superradiance occurs due to constructive interference, which grows stronger with atom number. This leads to a critical distance that scales sublogarithmically with atom number in 2D, and as a power law in 3D. In one-dimensional arrays, superradiance occurs due to destructive interference that effectively switches off certain decay channels, yielding a critical distance that saturates with atom number. Our results provide a guide to explore many-body decay in state-of-the art experimental setups.
Many-body superradiance in ordered atomic arrays is a phenomenon where atomic synchronization gives rise to a burst in photon emission. This superradiant burst only occurs if there is one -- or just a few -- dominant decay channels. We demonstrate that superradiance exists in arrays of any dimensionality, as interference in photon emission leads to the preeminence of certain channels over others. In atomic chains superradiance occurs only below a critical interatomic distance, which we derive analytically. Increasing the array dimensionality leads to a critical distance that scales with system size: sub-logarithmically for 2D, and seemingly faster than that for 3D lattices. We perform calculations for both infinite and finite systems, the latter by employing a highly-efficient algorithm with a computational complexity that scales only linearly with system size, which enables us to study very large arrays. Our results provide a guide to explore this many-body phenomenon in state-of-the art experimental setups.
In inverted atomic ensembles, photon-mediated interactions give rise to Dicke superradiance, a form of many-body decay that results in a rapid release of energy as a photon burst. While originally studied in pointlike ensembles, this phenomenon persists in extended ordered systems if the interparticle distance is below a certain bound. Here, we investigate Dicke superradiance in a realistic experimental setting using ordered arrays of alkaline-earth(-like) atoms, such as strontium and ytterbium. Such atoms offer exciting new opportunities for light-matter interactions, as their internal structure allows for trapping at short interatomic distances compared to their long-wavelength transitions, providing the potential for collectively enhanced dissipative interactions. Despite their intricate electronic structure, we show that two-dimensional arrays of these atomic species should exhibit many-body superradiance for achievable lattice constants. Moreover, superradiance effectively “closes” transitions, such that multilevel atoms become more two-level like. This occurs because the avalanchelike decay funnels the emission of most photons into the dominant transition, overcoming the single-atom decay ratios dictated by their fine structure and Zeeman branching. Our work represents an important step in harnessing alkaline-earth atoms as quantum optical sources and as platforms to explore many-body dissipative dynamics. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Dicke superradiance is an example of emergence of macroscopic quantum coherence via correlated dissipation. Starting from an initially incoherent state, a collection of excited atoms synchronizes as they decay, generating a macroscopic dipole moment and emitting a short and intense pulse of light. While well understood in cavities, superradiance remains an open problem in extended systems due to the exponential growth of complexity with atom number. Here we show that Dicke superradiance is a universal phenomenon in ordered arrays. We present a theoretical framework - which circumvents the exponential complexity of the problem - that allows us to predict the critical distance beyond which Dicke superradiance disappears. This critical distance is highly dependent on the dimensionality and atom number. Our predictions can be tested in state of the art experiments with arrays of neutral atoms, molecules, and solid-state emitters and pave the way towards understanding the role of many-body decay in quantum simulation, metrology, and lasing.
Photon-mediated interactions within an excited ensemble of emitters can result in Dicke superradiance, where the emission rate is greatly enhanced, manifesting as a high-intensity burst at short times. The superradiant burst is most commonly observed in systems with long-range interactions between the emitters, although the minimal interaction range remains unknown. Here, we put forward a new theoretical method to bound the maximum emission rate by upper bounding the spectral radius of an auxiliary Hamiltonian. We harness this tool to prove that for an arbitrary ordered array with only nearest-neighbor interactions in all dimensions, a superradiant burst is not physically observable. We show that Dicke superradiance requires minimally the inclusion of next-nearest-neighbor interactions. For exponentially decaying interactions, the critical coupling is found to be asymptotically independent of the number of emitters in all dimensions, thereby defining the threshold interaction range where the collective enhancement balances out the decoherence effects. Our findings provide key physical insights to the understanding of collective decay in many-body quantum systems, and the designing of superradiant emission in physical systems for applications such as energy harvesting and quantum sensing.
Fully excited two-level atoms separated by less than the transition wavelength cooperatively emit light in a short burst, a phenomenon called superradiance by R. Dicke in 1954 [Phys. Rev. 93, 99 (1954)]. The burst is characterized by a maximum intensity scaling with the square of the number of atoms NNN and a temporal width reduced by NNN compared to the single atom spontaneous decay time. Both effects are usually attributed to a synchronization of the electric dipole moments of the atoms occurring during the process of light emission. Contrary to this explanation, it was recently shown by use of a quantum path description that the peak intensity results from the quantum correlations among the atoms when occupying symmetric Dicke states. Here we investigate from this perspective the temporal evolution of the ensemble, starting in the small sample limit, i.e., when the atoms have mutual separations much smaller than the transition wavelength $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ and pass down the ladder of symmetric Dicke states. In addition, we explore the temporal evolution for the case of distant noninteracting atoms with mutual separations much larger than $\ensuremath{\lambda}$. We show that in this case a similar superradiant burst of the emitted radiation is observed if the quantum correlations of the atoms are generated by conditional photon measurements retaining the atomic ensemble within or close to the symmetric subspace.
When quantum emitters couple indistinguishably to light, they can synchronize into a collective light matter system with radiative properties profoundly different from those of independent particles. To date, the resulting collective effects have largely been confined to point like or homogeneous ensembles. Here, we open access to a qualitatively new collective regime by realizing geometrically ordered, spatially extended atom arrays with subwavelength spacing. This establishes a fundamentally new platform in which collective emission is no longer confined to a single Dicke mode but instead emerges from an ordered network of photon mediated interactions. We find that 2D atom arrays undergo strong super and subradiant emission. Despite subwavelength spacing, we achieve site resolved imaging and directly observe the buildup of spatial correlations, demonstrating the transformation of cooperative decay into a strongly correlated many-body process. We observe extensive scaling of superradiance, uncover superradiant revivals, and reveal the ferromagnetic nature of superradiance and the antiferromagnetic nature of subradiance. Our results realize a novel programmable platform for exploring and utilizing dissipative many-body quantum physics, opening new possibilities for photon capture, storage, and atom photon entanglement.