Population of collective modes in light scattering by many atoms

Abstract

The interaction of light with an atomic sample containing a large number of particles gives rise to many collective (or cooperative) effects, such as multiple scattering, superradiance and subradiance, even if the atomic density is low and the incident optical intensity weak (linear optics regime). Tracing over the degrees of freedom of the light field, the system can be well described by an effective atomic Hamiltonian, which contains the light-mediated dipole-dipole interaction between atoms. This long-range interaction is at the origin of the various collective effects, or of collective excitation modes of the system. Even though an analysis of the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of these collective modes does allow distinguishing superradiant modes, for instance, from other collective modes, this is not sufficient to understand the dynamics of a driven system, as not all collective modes are significantly populated. Here, we study how the excitation parameters, i.e. the driving field, determines the population of the collective modes. We investigate in particular the role of the laser detuning from the atomic transition, and demonstrate a simple relation between the detuning and the steady-state population of the modes. This relation allows understanding several properties of cooperative scattering, such as why superradiance and subradiance become independent of the detuning at large enough detuning without vanishing, and why superradiance, but not subradiance, is suppressed near resonance.

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Cited by in corpus (23)

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• Subradiance with saturated atoms: population enhancement of the long-lived states
• Directional Dicke Subradiance with Nonclassical and Classical Light Sources
• Subradiance and superradiance-to-subradiance transition in dilute atomic clouds
• Collective Excitation Dynamics of a Cold Atom Cloud
• Decay dynamics in the coupled-dipole model
• Observation of collective decay dynamics of a single Rydberg superatom
• Van der Waals dephasing for Dicke subradiance in cold atomic clouds
• Superradiance as single scattering embedded in an effective medium
• Subradiance in dilute atomic ensembles: Role of pairs and multiple scattering
• Photon correlation transients in a weakly blockaded Rydberg ensemble
• Near-resonant light transmission in two-dimensional dense cold atomic media with short-range positional correlations
• Optical interpretation of linear-optics superradiance and subradiance
• Localization versus subradiance in three-dimensional scattering of light
• Super- and subradiance in dilute disordered cold atomic samples: observations and interpretations
• $N$ Scaling of Large-Sample Collective Decay in Inhomogeneous Ensembles
• Self-induced cooling of optically bound pairs of atoms
• Cooperative photon emission rates in random atomic clouds
• Cooperative atomic emission from a line of atoms interacting with a resonant plane surface
• Mean-Field Description of Cooperative Scattering by Atomic Clouds