Simulating superradiance from higher-order-intensity-correlation measurements: Single atoms Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2015 American Physical Society. 2015 American Physical Society. Superradiance typically requires preparation of atoms in highly entangled multiparticle states, the so-called Dicke states. In this paper we discuss an alternative route where we prepare such states from initially uncorrelated atoms by a measurement process. By measuring higher-order intensity-intensity correlations we demonstrate that we can simulate the emission characteristics of Dicke superradiance by starting with atoms in the fully excited state. We describe the essence of the scheme by first investigating two excited atoms. Here we demonstrate how via Hanbury Brown and Twiss type of measurements we can produce Dicke superradiance and subradiance displayed commonly with two atoms in the single excited symmetric and antisymmetric Dicke states, respectively. We thereafter generalize the scheme to arbitrary numbers of atoms and detectors, and explain in detail the mechanism which leads to this result. The approach shows that the Hanbury Brown and Twiss type of intensity interference and the phenomenon of Dicke superradiance can be regarded as two sides of the same coin. We also present a compact result for the characteristic functional which generates all order intensity-intensity correlations.

published proceedings

  • Physical Review A

altmetric score

  • 0.5

author list (cited authors)

  • Wiegner, R., Oppel, S., Bhatti, D., von Zanthier, J., & Agarwal, G. S.

citation count

  • 24

complete list of authors

  • Wiegner, R||Oppel, S||Bhatti, D||von Zanthier, J||Agarwal, GS

publication date

  • September 2015