Abstract

Cooperative emission from a collection of atoms prepared in an initial state of complete inversion has been studied extensively in the past.^[1,2] There are two broad categories, namely superfluorescence (SF) and amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) under which one can classify the emission. SF corresponds to a complete cooperation in the radiating system, while in ASE there is no cooperation at all. Several key experiments have been done to study various aspects of the SF and ASE phenomenon. Recently interest in SF and ASE has been revived by a very interesting experiment done by the Rochester group.^[3]

© 1992 IQEC