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Physical Review Letters

Macroscopic Quantum Fluctuations in Superfluorescence

Fritz Haake, Harald King, Guntram Schröder, Joe Haus, Roy J. Glauber, F. A. Hopf

Published Jun 25, 1979• 77 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that superfluorescent pulses fluctuate singificantly in shape notwithstanding their classical dynamical behavior. These fluctuations can be understood as originating from the quantum mechanical uncertainty of the initial polarization.
DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.42.1740

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We show that certain properties of superfluorescent pulses radiated spontaneously by a system of many initially excited two-level atoms can be described by means of the classical Maxwell-Bloch equations. The quantum fluctuations which initiate the pulse are random initial polarizations. The radiated fields which arise from different initial polarization distributions vary significantly from pulse to pulse. Such variations represent quantum uncertainties amplified to the macroscopic level. Probability distributions are calculated for various parameters characterizing the shape of the output pulse as well as the mean and the variance of the radiated intensity.
Measurements are reported of the quantum fluctuations in superfluorescence delay times. The fluctuations depend strongly on the Fresnel number FFF of the sample. For $F\ensuremath{\approx}1$ fair agreement with recent theories is obtained, while for larger FFF the fluctuations are smaller. A qualitative explanation for this FFF dependence is proposed. No correlation has been found between the delay times of pulses emitted from opposite ends of the same sample.
A generalized master equation previously proposed to describe oscillatory superfluorescence is numerically solved in the case of strong ringing. When the atomic system is fully excited, anomalous fluctuations and large atom-field correlations make the time evolution of the mean quantities (e.g., number of photons, total population inversion) quantitatively different from those found in the semiclassical treatment. In particular, because of fluctuations, the minima of the radiation output are notably larger than zero. On the contrary, when the atomic system exhibits a sizable initial macroscopic polarization (superradiance), we find a remarkable non-Markoffian effect consisting of a sizable delay in the radiation emission. However, in such conditions all quantum effects disappear, as in the case of pure superradiance.