Large-N limit of spontaneous superradiance

Abstract

We investigate the thermodynamic limit of Dicke superradiance. We find an expression for the system's density matrix that we can prove is exact in the limit of large atom numbers N. This is in contrast to previously known solutions whose accuracy has only been established numerically and that are valid only for a range of times. We also introduce an asymptotically exact solution when the system is subject to additional incoherent decay of excitations as this is a common occurrence in experiment.