Fluctuating electric fields emanating from surfaces are a major possible source of decoherence in a number of quantum applications, including trapped ions and near-surface nitrogen-vacancy diamond qubits. Here, we show that at low temperatures, due to superradiant decay, phonon-induced excitation exchange between adsorbed atoms can counterintuitively mitigate the electric field noise. We derive an exact mapping between the noise spectrum of $N$ interacting fluctuators with $M$ vibrational levels to $\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{N+M-1}{N}\right)$-1 noninteracting two-level dipoles. The anharmonic interaction of the fluctuators with the surface is semiempirical and physically motivated. This anharmonicity affects the noise spectral power intensity at higher temperatures. We describe conditions for which the ubiquitous $1/f$ noise emerges naturally from the coupled dynamics of identical fluctuators and whose behavior depends critically on correlation among the fluctuators.

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• Fluctuations & noise
• Noise
• Quantum fluctuations & noise
• Strongly correlated systems
• Trapped ions