Cooperative Emission of Light Quanta: A Theory of Coherent Radiation Damping

Abstract

A quantum emitted by any of a collection of identical atoms may be absorbed and re-emitted by other atoms many times before it eventually emerges. The radiation process is thus best described as collective or cooperative in nature. The atomic excitations are shown to attenuate as linear combinations of certain characteristic decay modes that lend a complex structure to the spectrum radiated. Instead of a single line, it becomes a closely-spaced multiplet of lines, the elements of which have a variety of lifetimes, line-shifts and line-widths. We calculate these quantities, first with an abstract two-state model for the atoms and then with an isotropic four-state model that accommodates the full polarization dependence of the radiation.