Superfluorescence in CdS/CdSe/CdS Spherical Quantum Wells Modulated by Excitation Geometry

Abstract

Superfluorescence (SF) originates from the spontaneous buildup of macroscopic coherence among initially incoherent emitters. Its formation is highly sensitive to dephasing and collective coupling in the system. Here, we observe room-temperature SF in CdS/CdSe/CdS spherical quantum wells. With increasing excitation fluence, the peak emission intensity shows a nearly quadratic increase, while the emission delay and pulse width decrease. Burnham-Chiao ringing is also observed, revealing the characteristic collective radiation dynamics of SF. Further experiments with stripe excitation show that shortening the excitation length L changes the dominant fast emission from amplified spontaneous emission to SF. More importantly, the threshold for SF under stripe excitation is only about 1/30 of that under spot excitation. This large reduction indicates that the propagating radiation field provided by spatially extended excitation favors the buildup of cooperative coherence. These findings provide direct experimental evidence for understanding ultrafast many-body coherence dynamics and offer a route to actively control collective emission at room temperature.