2026/07/30 by Nico S. Bassler, Julian Lyne, Javier Cuerda
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.optics
5+11 pages, 3+4 figures
arxiv created 2026/07/30 · arxiv updated 2026/07/31
The survival of many-body coherence depends on the competition between correlation buildup and decoherence. In Dicke superradiance, collective emission builds up correlations, producing a peak intensity scaling as N2 for N emitters. We develop a scaling theory including local dephasing and spontaneous emission and obtain fully collective, partially collective, and independent-emitter scaling regimes. The boundary of the fully collective regime defines a continuous phase transition in a transient observable. Local decoherence can prevent N2 scaling despite increasing N.