Subradiance in dilute atomic ensembles: Role of pairs and multiple scattering

Abstract

We study numerically the slow (subradiant) decay of the fluorescence of motionless atoms after a weak pulsed excitation. We show that, in the linear-optics regime and for an excitation detuned by several natural linewidths, the slow decay rate can be dominated by close pairs of atoms (dimers) forming superradiant and subradiant states. However, for a large-enough resonant optical depth and at later time, the dynamics is dominated by collective many-body effects. In this regime, we study the polarization and the spectrum of the emitted light, as well as the spatial distribution of excitation inside the sample, as a function of time during the decay dynamics. The behavior of these observables is consistent with what would be expected for radiation trapping of nearly resonant light. This finding sheds light on subradiance in dilute samples by providing an interpretation based on the light behavior of the system (multiple scattering) which is complementary to the more commonly used picture of the collective atomic Dicke state.

References in corpus (12)

• A subradiant optical mirror formed by a single structured atomic layer
• Storing light with subradiant correlations in arrays of atoms
• Dynamical evolution of correlated spontaneous emission of a single photon from a uniformly excited cloud of N atoms
• Cooperative Spontaneous Emission as a Many Body Eigenvalue Problem
• Storage and release of subradiant excitations in a dense atomic cloud
• Cooperative effects and disorder: A scaling analysis of the spectrum of the effective atomic Hamiltonian
• Magnetic-field-driven localization of light in a cold-atom gas
• A Nanoscale Coherent Light Source
• Effect of superradiance on transport of diffusing photons in cold atomic gases
• Van der Waals dephasing for Dicke subradiance in cold atomic clouds
• Superradiance as single scattering embedded in an effective medium
• Comparison of three approaches to light scattering by dilute cold atomic ensembles

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Optical interpretation of linear-optics superradiance and subradiance
• Renormalization group analysis of near-field induced dephasing of optical spin waves in an atomic medium
• Nonradiant multiphoton states in quantum ring oligomers
• Cooperative photon emission rates in random atomic clouds
• Subradiance generation in a chain of two-level atoms with a single excitation
• Condensation of vanishing photon emission rates in random atomic clouds