We give a general nonperturbative treatment of cooperative emission in systems of $N$ two-level atoms, starting from first principles and including inhomogeneous broadening. In particular, we study superfluorescence, which is defined as the cooperative spontaneous emission, i.e., radiation rate proportional to $N^2$, from an atomic system initially excited with zero macroscopic dipole moment and a uniform population difference between the excited and the fundamental states. The atomic system is described by means of collective dipole operators. A fundamental justification is given for the existence of damped "quasimodes" of the mirrorless active volume. The damping of such modes is simply due to the propagation of the Maxwell field, which escapes from the active volume. A general atom-field master equation is derived for the system atoms plus field inside the active volume, described, respectively, in terms of collective dipole operators and quasimode operators. An important feature of this equation is that inhomogeneous broadening simply appears via a time-dependent atom-field coupling constant. In this paper we give a semiclassical treatment of such a master equation. For a pencil-shaped geometry of the active volume, generalized Maxwell-Bloch equations are derived for the envelopes of the radiation inside the active volume and polarization. Such equations take into account the two directions of propagation of the radiation and the inhomogeneous broadening. Suitably phrasing our initial condition in semiclassical terms, we find that propagation effects can be neglected at all times and the generalized Maxwell-Bloch equations reduce to a simple pendulum equation. On the basis of the discussion of the pendulum equation, we conclude that superfluorescence occurs when (i) the length $L$ of the active volume is much larger than a suitable threshold length $L_T$ (this condition ensures that the dephasing atomic processes occur on a time scale much larger than the times characteristic of the cooperative emission); (ii) the length $L$ is smaller or of the same order of a suitable cooperation length $L_c$ (this condition ensures that cooperative spontaneous emission dominates stimulated processes, which give radiation proportional to $N$). For $L\ll L_c$, one has a hyperbolic-secant superfluorescent pulse; for $L\approx L_c$, as one has in the recent experiments of Skribanowitz et al., one finds oscillations in the cooperative decay and in the radiation emission. Such oscillations are due to the contribution of stimulated processes. For $L\gg L_c$, this contribution increases. As a consequence one gets more oscillations in the radiated intensity, which becomes proportional to $N$, so that superfluorescence effects disappear.

• Received 12 August 1974

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.11.1507