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arXiv:2504.13646 · Physical Review A

Absence of entanglement growth in Dicke superradiance

Nico S. Bassler

Published Nov 13, 2025• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Dicke superradiance describes an ensemble of N permutationally invariant two-level systems collectively emitting radiation with a peak radiated intensity scaling as N 2 . Individual Dicke states are typically entangled. However, the density matrix during superradiant decay is a mixture of such states, raising the subtle question of whether the total state is entangled or separable. We resolve this by showing analytically that for any N , starting from the fully excited state, the collective decay preserves separability for all times. This answers a longstanding question on the role of entanglement in Dicke superradiance and underscores that, despite collective dissipation, separable states remain separable under these dynamics.

DOI
10.1103/qxx1-xr44

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Dicke superradiance describes an ensemble of N permutationally invariant two-level systems collectively emitting radiation with a peak radiated intensity scaling as N 2 . Individual Dicke states are typically entangled. However, the density matrix during superradiant decay is a mixture of such states, raising the subtle question of whether the total state is entangled or separable. We resolve this by showing analytically that for any N , starting from the fully excited state, the collective decay preserves separability for all times. This answers a longstanding question on the role of entanglement in Dicke superradiance and underscores that, despite collective dissipation, separable states remain separable under these dynamics.
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. 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 λλλ and pass down the ladder of symmetric Dicke states. In addition, we explore the temporal evolution for the case of non-interacting atoms with mutual separations much larger than λλλ. 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.
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.
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.
We show that idealized Dicke superradiant decay from a fully inverted state can at all times be described by a positive statistical mixture of coherent spin states (CSS). Since CSS are separable, this implies that no entanglement is involved in Dicke decay. Based on this result, we introduce a new numerical quantum trajectory approach leading to low-entanglement unravelings. This opens up new possibilities for employing matrix product state (MPS) techniques for large-scale numerical simulations with collective decay processes.
The survival of many-body coherence depends on the competition between correlation buildup and decoherence. In Dicke superradiance, collective emission builds up correlations, producing a peak intensity scaling as N2N^2N2 for NNN emitters. We develop a scaling theory including local dephasing and spontaneous emission and obtain fully collective, partially collective, and independent-emitter scaling regimes. The boundary of the fully collective regime defines a continuous phase transition in a transient observable. Local decoherence can prevent N2N^2N2 scaling despite increasing NNN.
We study a bosonic analog of the paradigmatic Dicke model of superradiance, comprising interacting bosonic modes subject to fully symmetric collective decay. Depending on the interaction strength, we uncover qualitatively distinct regimes of emission. For strong interactions, the emission closely resembles Dicke superradiance, with perturbative corrections arising from the presence of additional levels. For weaker interactions, the bosonic statistics qualitatively changes the dynamics, leading to a crossover to subradiant emission. Remarkably, we show that the dynamics in this regime can be described by rate equations analogous to those of the Dicke model despite the large accessible bosonic Hilbert space. Our findings are based on a combination of analytical arguments and large-scale numerics enabled by the permutational symmetry of the problem and may be probed in circuit QED experiments.