Dicke Symmetric Emission Ladder

In 1954, R. H. Dicke introduced the concept of superradiance, describing how a collection of N two-level atoms confined within a volume smaller than the emission wavelength can decay cooperatively. Unlike independent atoms that decay exponentially with a rate proportional to the number of excited atoms, the atoms in a symmetric Dicke state emit photons at an enhanced rate that peaks halfway through the decay process.

Experiment

You can interact with the module to see how the collective emission rate evolves as the number of excitations changes.

1. Open the interactive module at https://riano.app/module/dicke-symmetric-emission-ladder.
2. Set Atoms to 8.
3. Set Excitations to 4.
4. Set Single-atom rate to 1.
5. Observe the Collective rate value, which displays 20. Compare this to the Independent rate of 4.
6. Change Excitations to 8 (fully inverted). Observe that the initial collective rate is 8, exactly equal to the independent rate. The enhanced peak rate of 20 will only be reached later as the system cascades down the ladder to n = 4.