Abstract

Cooperative emission from a collection of atoms prepared in an initial state of complete inversion has been studied extensively in the past. In this paper we study the cooperative emission in dense atomic systems where there is a large average number of atoms per cubic resonance wavelength. For systems with such large densities, effects of the induced dipole-dipole interaction among neighboring atoms become important. Recently it has been shown that such interatomic interaction in a dense atomic system can lead to novel nonlinear effects.¹,² The induced dipole-dipole interaction for two-level atoms appears as a nonlinear inversion dependent renormalization of the atomic resonance frequency which gives rise to a set of modified Maxwell-Bloch equations. We study the phenomenon of superfluorescence (SF) and amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) using the modified Maxwell-Bloch equations. Statistical effects of amplified quantum stochastic processes are analyzed in SF and ASE. Phase wave statistics are analyzed in the linear regime of coherent pulse buildup. Amplified effects in the nonlinear regime in the SF to ASE transition region are statistically analyzed. Dipole dephasing due to collisions is found to play an important role.

© 1989 Optical Society of America