TY - JOUR
T1 - Dicke Superradiance in Ordered Arrays of Multilevel Atoms
AU - Masson, Stuart J.
AU - Covey, Jacob P.
AU - Will, Sebastian
AU - Asenjo-Garcia, Ana
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.
PY - 2024/1
Y1 - 2024/1
N2 - In inverted atomic ensembles, photon-mediated interactions give rise to Dicke superradiance, a form of many-body decay that results in a rapid release of energy as a photon burst. While originally studied in pointlike ensembles, this phenomenon persists in extended ordered systems if the interparticle distance is below a certain bound. Here, we investigate Dicke superradiance in a realistic experimental setting using ordered arrays of alkaline-earth(-like) atoms, such as strontium and ytterbium. Such atoms offer exciting new opportunities for light-matter interactions, as their internal structure allows for trapping at short interatomic distances compared to their long-wavelength transitions, providing the potential for collectively enhanced dissipative interactions. Despite their intricate electronic structure, we show that two-dimensional arrays of these atomic species should exhibit many-body superradiance for achievable lattice constants. Moreover, superradiance effectively "closes"transitions, such that multilevel atoms become more two-level like. This occurs because the avalanchelike decay funnels the emission of most photons into the dominant transition, overcoming the single-atom decay ratios dictated by their fine structure and Zeeman branching. Our work represents an important step in harnessing alkaline-earth atoms as quantum optical sources and as platforms to explore many-body dissipative dynamics.
AB - In inverted atomic ensembles, photon-mediated interactions give rise to Dicke superradiance, a form of many-body decay that results in a rapid release of energy as a photon burst. While originally studied in pointlike ensembles, this phenomenon persists in extended ordered systems if the interparticle distance is below a certain bound. Here, we investigate Dicke superradiance in a realistic experimental setting using ordered arrays of alkaline-earth(-like) atoms, such as strontium and ytterbium. Such atoms offer exciting new opportunities for light-matter interactions, as their internal structure allows for trapping at short interatomic distances compared to their long-wavelength transitions, providing the potential for collectively enhanced dissipative interactions. Despite their intricate electronic structure, we show that two-dimensional arrays of these atomic species should exhibit many-body superradiance for achievable lattice constants. Moreover, superradiance effectively "closes"transitions, such that multilevel atoms become more two-level like. This occurs because the avalanchelike decay funnels the emission of most photons into the dominant transition, overcoming the single-atom decay ratios dictated by their fine structure and Zeeman branching. Our work represents an important step in harnessing alkaline-earth atoms as quantum optical sources and as platforms to explore many-body dissipative dynamics.
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U2 - 10.1103/PRXQuantum.5.010344
DO - 10.1103/PRXQuantum.5.010344
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85187961046
SN - 2691-3399
VL - 5
JO - PRX Quantum
JF - PRX Quantum
IS - 1
M1 - 010344
ER -