Abstract
We study emission of a single photon from a spherically symmetric cloud of atoms (one atom is excited; are in the ground state) and present an exact analytical expression for eigenvalues and eigenstates of this many-body problem. We found that some states decay much faster than the single-atom decay rate, while other states are trapped and undergo very slow decay. When the size of the atomic cloud is small compared with the radiation wavelength, we found that the radiation frequency undergoes a large shift.
- Received 10 May 2007
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.77.043833
©2008 American Physical Society