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Condensation of vanishing photon emission rates in random atomic clouds

Viviana Viggiano1,2, Romain Bachelard3, Fabio Deelan Cunden4,2, Paolo Facchi1,2, Robin Kaiser5, Saverio Pascazio1,2, Francesco V. Pepe1,2, and Antonello Scardicchio6,7

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Phys. Rev. A 112, 013304 – Published 14 July, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/v4vy-wn4p

Abstract

In the collective photon emission from atomic clouds both the atomic transition frequency and the decay rate are modified compared to a single isolated atom, leading to the effects of superradiance and subradiance. In this article, we analyze the properties of the Euclidean random matrix associated with the radiative dynamics of a cold atomic cloud, previously investigated in the contexts of photon localization and Dicke super- and subradiance. We present evidence of a phase transition, surprisingly controlled by the cooperativeness parameter, rather than the spatial density or the diagonal disorder. The numerical results corroborate the occurrence of such a phase transition at a critical value of the cooperativeness parameter, above which the lower edge of the spectrum vanishes, exhibiting a macroscopic accumulation of eigenvalues. Independent evaluations based on the two phenomena provide the same value for the critical cooperativeness parameter.

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Information

Phys. Rev. A 112, 013304– Published 14 July, 2025
  • Received 2 October 2024
  • Revised 18 February 2025
  • Accepted 30 May 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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