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arXiv:2211.00668 · Physical Review Letters

Dicke Superradiance Requires Interactions beyond Nearest Neighbors

Wai‐Keong Mok, Ana Asenjo-Garcı́a, Tze Chien Sum, L. C. Kwek

Published May 25, 2023• 23 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.130.213605

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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.
Dicke superradiance is essentially a case of correlated dissipation leading to the macroscopic quantum coherence. Superradiance for arrays of inverted emitters in free space requires interactions far beyond the nearest neighbor, limiting its occurrence to small emitter-emitter distances. Epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) materials, which exhibit infinite effective wavelengths, can mediate long-range interactions between emitters. We investigate the superradiance properties of two ENZ structures, namely plasmonic waveguides and dielectric photonic crystals, and demonstrate their potential to support near-ideal Dicke superradiance across expanded spatial domains. We employ a general method that we have developed to assess the occurrence of superradiance, which is applicable to various coupling scenarios and relies only on the decoherence matrix. Furthermore, by numerically examining the emission dynamics of the few-emitter systems, we distinguish the roles of quantum coherence at different stages of emission for the case of all-to-all interaction, and demonstrate that the maximum quantum coherence in the system can be determined using the maximum photon burst rate. The findings of this work have prospective applications in quantum information processing and light-matter interaction.
Dicke superradiance is a collective phenomenon where the emission from ensembles of quantum emitters is coherently enhanced beyond the sum of each emitter's independent emission. Here, we propose a platform that exploits the delocalised nature of a high-Q, non-local mode supported by a dielectric metasurface (a so-called bound-state-in-the-continuum or BIC) to induce superradiant behaviour within an extended two-dimensional array of distant quantum emitters. We show that these BIC-mediated emitter interactions can span several wavelengths, thus overcoming the traditional subwavelength separation between emitters required in free space. We further show that reaching the idealised Dicke limit is possible in this system, provided that the emitters are coupled to the BIC mode efficiently enough, as quantified through the βββ-factor. Moreover, we demonstrate its experimental viability by analysing its robustness to realistic experimental imperfections. This work puts forward optical metasurfaces supporting BICs as a physically viable platform for realising the upper limits of cooperative emission in physically extended quantum emitter arrays.
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.
Dicke superradiance by an ensemble of quantum emitters produces a collective burst of radiation, but no entanglement in the mixed state of the emitters. We show that adding a local kinetic constraint between the emitters generates extensive mixed-state entanglement, while otherwise preserving all key features of Dicke superradiance. Specifically, for any local Boolean constraint, we analytically derive a lower bound for the emission rate which implies a peak intensity ∝N2\propto N^2∝N2 and a peak time ∝(log⁡N)/N\propto (\log N)/N∝(logN)/N with number of spins NNN. This effect enables the superradiantly accelerated preparation of entangled dark states. Hereby, Hilbert-space fragmentation of the Dicke ladder leads to an exponentially branching decay tree that generates a hierarchy of dark states. Importantly, these disconnected manifolds include exponentially many long-range entangled singlet dark states. The explored kinetic constraints and superradiant dynamics can be realized in neutral-atom arrays coupled to an optical cavity, and we suggest a simple and accessible witness to detect the predicted mixed-state entanglement in such experiments. Moreover, we show that entanglement generation is robust against atomic decay and collective dephasing, and should be observable under recently reported experimental conditions. Our results, thereby, offer a general framework and experimentally viable approach for the dissipative engineering of entangled dark states enhanced by superradiance.
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
We experimentally investigate the collective radiative decay of a fully inverted ensemble of two-level atoms for a chiral, i.e., propagation direction-dependent light-matter coupling. Despite a fundamentally different interaction Hamiltonian which has a reduced symmetry compared to the standard Dicke case of superradiance, we do observe a superradiant burst of light. The burst occurs above a threshold number of atoms, and its peak power scales faster with the number of atoms than in the case of free-space Dicke superradiance. We measure the first-order coherence of the burst and experimentally distinguish two regimes, one dominated by the coherence induced during the excitation process and the other governed by vacuum fluctuations. Our results shed light on the collective radiative dynamics of cascaded quantum many-body systems, i.e., systems in which each quantum emitter is only driven by light radiated by emitters that are upstream in the cascade. Our findings may turn out useful for generating multiphoton Fock states as a resource for quantum technologies. Published by the American Physical Society 2024