Collective excitation and decay of waveguide-coupled atoms: from timed Dicke states to inverted ensembles

Abstract

The collective absorption and emission of light by an ensemble of atoms is at the heart of many fundamental quantum optical effects and the basis for numerous applications. However, beyond weak excitation, both experiment and theory become increasingly challenging. Here, we explore the regimes from weak excitation to inversion with ensembles of up to one thousand atoms that are trapped and optically interfaced using the evanescent field surrounding an optical nanofiber. We realize strong inversion, with about 80% of the atoms being excited, and study their subsequent radiative decay into the guided modes. The data is very well described by a simple model that assumes a cascaded interaction of the guided light with the atoms. Our results contribute to the fundamental understanding of the collective interaction of light and matter and are relevant for applications ranging from quantum memories to sources of nonclassical light to optical frequency standards.

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• Dicke superradiance requires interactions beyond nearest-neighbors
• Predicting correlations in superradiant emission from a cascaded quantum system
• Squeezed superradiance enables robust entanglement-enhanced metrology even with highly imperfect readout
• Effects of retardation on many-body superradiance in chiral waveguide QED
• Tunable photon scattering by an atom dimer coupled to a band edge of a photonic crystal waveguide
• Exact solution for the collective non-Markovian decay of two fully excited quantum emitters
• Nonradiant multiphoton states in quantum ring oligomers
• Emergence of second-order coherence in superfluorescence
• Controlling Excitation Localization in Waveguide QED Systems
• Collective emission and selective radiance in atomic clouds and arrays coupled to a microring resonator
• Collective light-matter interaction in plasmonic waveguide quantum electrodynamics
• Flat band mediated photon-photon interactions in 2D waveguide QED networks