Universal trapping law induced by an atomic cloud in single-photon cooperative dynamics
Lei Qiao, Chang-Pu Sun · Physical Review A · 2020
The single-photon cooperative dynamics of an assembly of two-level quantum emitters coupled by a bosonic bath is investigated. The bosonic bath is general and can be anything as long as the exchange of excitations between quantum emitters and bath is present. In these systems it is found that the population on the excited emitter keeps a simple and universal trapping law due to the existence of the system's dark states. Different from the trapping regime caused by photon-emitter dressed states, this type of trapping is only associated with the number of quantum emitters. According to the trapping law, cooperative spontaneous emission at the single-photon level in this kind of system is universally inhibited when the emitter number is large enough.