Dynamical evolution of correlated spontaneous emission of a single photon from a uniformly excited cloud of N atoms. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We study the correlated spontaneous emission from a dense spherical cloud of N atoms uniformly excited by absorption of a single photon. We find that the decay of such a state depends on the relation between an effective Rabi frequency Omega proportional square root N and the time of photon flight through the cloud R/c. If OmegaR/c<1 the state exponentially decays with rate Omega(2)R/c and the state lifetime is greater than R/c. In the opposite limit OmegaR/c>>1, the coupled atom-radiation system oscillates between the collective Dicke state (with no photons) and the atomic ground state (with one photon) with frequency Omega while decaying at a rate c/R.

published proceedings

  • Phys Rev Lett

author list (cited authors)

  • Svidzinsky, A. A., Chang, J., & Scully, M. O.

citation count

  • 130

complete list of authors

  • Svidzinsky, Anatoly A||Chang, Jun-Tao||Scully, Marlan O

publication date

  • April 2008