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arXiv:2508.09962 · Physical Review A

Quantum statistics of single-mode radiation emitted by superradiant Dicke states

Anirudh Yadav, Deniz D. Yavuz

Published Nov 17, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

We study the quantum statistics of single-mode radiation emitted by an atomic ensemble when the ensemble is initially prepared in a superradiant Dicke state. We show that while the radiation is well approximated by the Glauber coherent state at early times in the evolution, the emission can be truly quantum at later times. In particular, one can observe a large amount of photon-number squeezing in the emission under certain conditions; even a Fock state can be produced. We discuss the quantum statistics of the emission for various parameters, including different initial conditions for the atomic ensemble. To obtain these results, we have developed a formalism where we are able to calculate the quantum statistics of the emission over long time scales even when the number of atoms in the ensemble is quite large.

DOI
10.1103/gfl1-dq9m

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We study the quantum statistics of single-mode radiation emitted by an atomic ensemble when the ensemble is initially prepared in a superradiant Dicke state. We show that while the radiation is well approximated by the Glauber coherent state at early times in the evolution, the emission can be truly quantum at later times. In particular, one can observe a large amount of photon-number squeezing in the emission under certain conditions; even a Fock state can be produced. We discuss the quantum statistics of the emission for various parameters, including different initial conditions for the atomic ensemble. To obtain these results, we have developed a formalism where we are able to calculate the quantum statistics of the emission over long time scales even when the number of atoms in the ensemble is quite large.
A system of many #we-level atoms or molecules in a collective Dieke state (1) interacting with a single resonant mode of the quantized radiation field has often been adopted as a quantum-mechanical model for a point laser (2). In a previous paper (3) we reported exact dosed-form solutions and photon statistics of coherent spontaneous emission for the model atom-field state in the l imit of infinitely large co-operation number. The purpose of this paper is to report more general results based on this modeI. We give the exact closed-form solutions and photon statistics of coherent emission in the presence of an applied field for the model atom-field state in the same limit. For an initial atomic Dicke state interacting with an applied field in a coherent (Glauber) state (a), the emitted pulse can be desoribed in terms of Glauber states only when the levels of excitation of the initial Dicke states are (~ superradiant ~ (~). For an initially highly inverted system or low excited system, the photon distributions undergo large fluctuations. The model interaction Hamil tonian is given by
Photon statistics are obtained from exact closed-form solutions for both spontaneous and stimulated coherent emissions by a large number of two-level atoms in a Dicke state. Depending on the initial excitation level of the atoms, three types of photon statistics are obtained for the emitted radiation field. Moments of the photon number of the emitted field are calculated in the case of initial atomic coherent states as well as Dicke states, and in the case of n-photon stimulating pulses as well as coherent stimulating pulses. In the particular case of an initial "superradiant" Dicke state stimulated by a coherent-radiation field, the emitted radiation pulse is also fully coherent. In other cases the photon distributions undergo large fluctuations.
Superradiance is an extensive cooperative spontaneous emission phenomenon, exhibited by some atomic collective-spin states. However, distinct initial states differ in their decay dynamics. Dicke states ∣j,m⟩|j,m\rangle∣j,m⟩ with distinct numbers of excitations n=m+jn=m+jn=m+j, driven by vacuum fluctuations, have their peak emission intensity shifted in time. Rotating Dicke states relative to the decay axis introduces an interesting parity structure that affects the pulse profile and photon correlations. Squeezed-bath prepared states undergo a squeezing-controlled crossover to the rotated Dicke states, making the emission character dependent on the amount of squeezing transferred from light to the atomic state. For semiclassical states with a macroscopic dipole moment, like the atomic coherent state, the emission intensity depends on their polarization. We present detailed results on the superradiant dynamics of a representative selection of states expanded in Dicke states to highlight the initial state as an independent dynamical control parameter. For large-NNN, we are able to predict fairly accurately the pulse profile in each case using the mean-field approximation, an approach based on the Fokker--Planck equation. We also present comparative results on the intensity correlation function, quantify the coherent and incoherent contributions of the emission, and contrast between small and large ensembles.
A normalized variance of a radiation field is introduced to study the coherence properties of spontaneous and induced emissions in the Dicke model Hamiltonian. It is shown that a superradiant emission from an atomic Dicke state cannot be in a coherent state, though the Dicke state emits photons in a Poisson distribution for the photon number. In the case of the induced omission for an initially intense coherent radiation field, the time evolution of the normalized variance is calculated to see to what extent the initially coherent state remains coherent. We obtain the time evolution of the expectation values of the atomic operators and the photon number operator. These solutions are then compared with semi-classical solutions obtained by taking the diagonal coherent state representation.
Coherent spontaneous emission from a system of NNN two-level atoms interacting with a quantized radiation field is treated for the case in which Dicke's "cooperation number" rrr is macroscopically large. It is shown how to modify the quasiclassical approach to this problem to incorporate quantum effects that are lost in the self-consistent-field approximation. The statistics of the emitted radiation are found to vary markedly with the initial state of the system of atoms. The photon statistics tend to that typical of blackbody radiation when the initial state of the atomic system is that which would result from incoherent pumping ($m\ensuremath{\sim}r$). When, on the other hand, the atoms are initially in a superradiant state ($m\ensuremath{\ll}r$), the emitted radiation may be represented approximately by a coherent state.
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.