From Superradiance to Superabsorption: An Exact Treatment of Non-Markovian Cooperative Radiation

Ignacio González; Ángel Rivas

doi:10.22331/q-2026-07-15-2159

From Superradiance to Superabsorption: An Exact Treatment of Non-Markovian Cooperative Radiation

¹Departamento de Física Teórica, Facultad de Ciencias Físicas, Universidad Complutense, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
²CCS-Center for Computational Simulation, Campus de Montegancedo UPM, 28660 Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, Spain.

Published:	2026-07-15, volume 10, page 2159
Editor:	Philip Taranto
Eprint:	arXiv:2601.05989v3
Doi:	https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2026-07-15-2159
Citation:	Quantum 10, 2159 (2026).

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Abstract

We investigate the emergence of cooperative radiation phenomena in ensembles of two-level atoms coupled to a lossy resonant cavity beyond the Markovian and mean-field approximations. By deriving a complete analytical solution for the two-emitter case and employing a numerically exact method for larger ensembles, we characterize the full transition from Markovian to non-Markovian collective dynamics for systems of up to $10^3$ emitters. Our results reveal three distinct regimes: a Markovian phase exhibiting the standard superradiant burst, a non-Markovian phase featuring spontaneous superabsorption of the emitted field, and a critical regime marked by pulsed collective emission. We show that the critical spectral width separating these behaviors increases monotonically with the number of emitters, demonstrating that environmental memory effects can be enhanced by cooperativity. Finally, we find that the superradiant scaling of the peak intensity progressively degrades with increasing system size, approaching a subquadratic law in the limit of a perfect cavity. In this regime, spontaneous superabsorption emerges as a distinct manifestation of non-Markovian cooperativity.

Popular summary

When many atoms emit light together, they can do so cooperatively, producing an intense burst known as superradiance. This phenomenon is usually described assuming that the surrounding environment has no memory, an approximation that breaks down in settings based on, e.g. high-quality cavities or engineered photonic systems. What happens to cooperative emission when environmental memory is important is the subject of growing interest in the research community.

In this work, we develop an exact theoretical description of collective atomic emission beyond this memoryless limit, combining analytical solutions with large-scale, numerically exact simulations. We uncover three distinct dynamical regimes: standard superradiant emission, a critical regime with pulsed light bursts, and a strongly non-Markovian regime where atoms spontaneously reabsorb previously emitted radiation.

Our results show that environmental memory fundamentally reshapes cooperative light–matter interactions and even limits the familiar quadratic scaling of superradiance. These findings open new possibilities for controlling light emission, energy recycling, and collective absorption in quantum optical devices and emerging quantum technologies.

► BibTeX data

@article{Gonzalez2026fromsuperradianceto,
  doi = {10.22331/q-2026-07-15-2159},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2026-07-15-2159},
  title = {From {S}uperradiance to {S}uperabsorption: {A}n {E}xact {T}reatment of {N}on-{M}arkovian {C}ooperative {R}adiation},
  author = {Gonz{\'{a}}lez, Ignacio and Rivas, {\'{A}}ngel},
  journal = {{Quantum}},
  issn = {2521-327X},
  publisher = {{Verein zur F{\"{o}}rderung des Open Access Publizierens in den Quantenwissenschaften}},
  volume = {10},
  pages = {2159},
  month = jul,
  year = {2026}
}

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