Collective effects in the photon statistics of thermal atomic ensembles

TL;DR

This paper models and experimentally investigates how collective atomic interactions in a thermal vapor influence photon statistics, revealing regimes where collective effects significantly alter light emission properties.

Contribution

The study introduces a theoretical model for collective effects in thermal atomic ensembles and demonstrates its agreement with experimental data across various conditions.

Findings

Good agreement between model and experiment

Potential to explore different photon statistics regimes

Identification of collective effects in thermal vapors

Abstract

We investigate the collective scattering of coherent light from a thermal alkali-metal vapor with temperatures ranging from 350 to 450 K, corresponding to average atomic spacings between $0.7 \lambda$ and $0.1 \lambda$. We develop a theoretical model treating the atomic ensemble as coherent, interacting, radiating dipoles. We show that the two-time second-order correlation function of a thermal ensemble can be described by an average of randomly positioned atomic pairs. Our model illustrates good agreement with the experimental results. Furthermore, we show how fine-tuning of the experimental parameters may make it possible to explore several photon statistics regimes.