Cavity accelerated superradiant systems and optical pulse area transitors

Summary form only given. The radiative behavior of an ensemble of correlated atoms can be dramatically different from that of a single atom. Correlation, for example, can give rise to sub- or superradiant emission. Experimental studies of the fascinating correlative effects expected have been severely constrained by difficulties in creating suitably correlated media and by propagation effects that perturb correlation during emission. We have found that optical cavities of moderate reflectivity and very short ring-down time can be employed to "accelerate" the superradiant process and bring it to dominance in media sufficiently dilute so that propagation effects both in excitation and emission are absent. For the first time, it is possible to observe strong optical superradiance under the pure and simple conditions that were originally envisioned. Note that superradiance here does not refer to the emission of initially inverted atomic samples (i.e. superfluorescence), but to cooperative emission from samples of atoms prepared in correlated superposition states. Moreover, the cavity accelerated superradiant system is found to display heretofore unknown nonlinear behavior in terms of its effect on the "area" of injected optical pulses.