Abstract

Cooperative emission from a collection of atoms prepared in an initial state of complete inversion has been studied extensively.^1,2 There are two broad categories under which one can classify the emission: superfluorescence (SF) and amplified spontaneous emission (ASE). SF corresponds to a complete cooperation in the radiating system, whereas in ASE there is no cooperation at all. Various aspects of the SF and ASE phenomena have been studied, and interest in SF and ASE has been revived recently by an experiment by Malcuit et al.²

© 1992 Optical Society of America