Fig. 3. Role of coherent and dissipative evolution in dephasing and suppression of Dicke superradiance.

a The coherent evolution does not significantly modify the early time dynamics, thus preserving superradiance, as shown by the full evolution of the master equation (i.e., Eq. (1)) for 16 initially excited atoms with inter-atomic distance d = 0.1λ₀ arranged in different geometries with and without Hamiltonian interactions. Emission rate is normalized by that at t = 0. b Three-photon decay is never enhanced unless two-photon emission is too, as demonstrated by the second- and third-order correlation functions, plotted as a function of the inter-atomic separation for a square 2D array of 6 × 6 atoms. In all cases, atoms are polarized perpendicular to the array.