Photon statistics in the cooperative spontaneous emission (Dickepsilas superradiance) is investigated by Monte-Carlo simulations. Giant photon bunching due to generation of superradiant photon pairs is predicted.
General properties of super-radiance--cooperative spontaneous emission of multi-atomic systems are explained on the basis of some simple models. First we consider spontaneous emission of two atoms separated from each other by a distance less than the wavelength. Then the kinetics of super-radiance of N-atomic system in a small volume are described. The main attention we put into super-radiance photon statistics. We show the Poissonian statistics for the main part of super-radiance pulse and demonstrate the special conditions when it can be Sub-Poissonian one.
Superradiance, i.e., spontaneous emission of coherent radiation by an ensemble of two-level atoms in collective states introduced by Dicke in 1954, is one of the enigmatic problems of quantum optics. The startling gist is that even though the atoms have no dipole moment they radiate with increased intensity in particular directions. Following the advances in our understanding of superradiant emission by atoms in entangled W-states we examine the quantum statistical properties of superradiance. Such investigations require the system to have at least two excitations in order to explore the photon-photon correlations of the radiation emitted by such states. We present specifically results for the spatially resolved photon-photon correlations of systems prepared in doubly excited W-states and give conditions when the atomic system emits nonclassial light. Equally, we derive the conditions for the occurrence of bunching and even of superbunching, a rare phenomenon otherwise known only from nonclassical states of light like the squeezed vacuum. We finally investigate the photon-photon cross correlations of the spontaneously scattered light and highlight the nonclassicalty of such correlations. The theoretical findings can be implemented with current technology, e.g., using ions in a linear rf-trap, atoms in an optical lattice or quantum dots in a cavity.
Macroscopic fluctuation of superradiance most sensitively appears as the fluctuation of the polarized photon number. This fluctuation is not much affected by unexpected variation of the exciting pulse area. In the superradiance limit the relative fiuctuation of the polarized photon number is equal to 1/3, and it decreases rapidly as the atomic number density is reduced below a threshold density. Such a characteristic change is attributed to a transition from the superradiant emission to the amplified spontaneous emission.