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Photonics
Special Issues
Collective Effects in Light-Matter Interactions
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Collective Effects in Light-Matter Interactions

A special issue of Photonics (ISSN 2304-6732). This special issue belongs to the section "Optoelectronics and Optical Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2026 | Viewed by 211

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Philippe Wilhelm Courteille

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Departamento de Física e Ciência dos Materiais, Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Interests: interaction of light with ultracold atoms; collective effects in light scattering; quantum sensing with entangled atoms and matter waves
Dr. Raul Teixeira

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centro de Ciências Exatas e de Tecnologia, Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Sao Carlos, Brazil
Interests: cold atoms; light–matter interactions; cold atoms interacting with cavities; collective effects on the interaction of light with matter

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Some emergent phenomena of light–matter interactions cannot be understood from the angle of susceptibility of individual atoms to light; rather, they stem from a collective response of the material system. Collective effects in light–matter interactions typically present different scaling with the number of constituents in the sample, such as superradiant emission of light, collective spin squeezing of atoms interacting with an optical cavity, or Anderson localization of light, to name just a few. Several of these effects provide/represent valuable resources for the implementation of photonic devices operating at the classical or quantum level, such as increased sensitivity, metrological gain, higher bandwidth, noise reduction, enhanced lifetime for the storage of quantum information, and robustness against decoherence.

This Special Issue aims at gathering the newest advances in the field of collective effects in light–matter interactions, including many-body modifications of the electrical susceptibility, light scattering by dense atomic samples and atomic arrays, light transport within topologically protected modes, etc. Researchers are invited to submit their contributions to this Special Issue, whose publication will attest to the vitality and importance of this research area.

We look forward to your submissions.

Dr. Philippe Wilhelm Courteille
Dr. Raul Teixeira
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Photonics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • collective light–matter interaction
  • collective light scattering
  • many-body quantum systems
  • anderson localization
  • collective atomic spin squeezing
  • topological edge modes
  • superradiance
  • subradiance

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

10 pages, 419 KB  
Article
Benchmarking the Cumulant Expansion Method Using Dicke Superradiance
by Martin Fasser, Claudiu Genes, Helmut Ritsch and Raphael Holzinger
Photonics 2025, 12(10), 996; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics12100996 - 10 Oct 2025
Viewed by 64
Abstract
Collective superradiant decay of a tightly packed inverted quantum emitter ensemble is among the most intensely studied phenomena in quantum optics. Since the seminal work of Dicke more than half a century ago, a plethora of theoretical calculations in quantum many-body physics have [...] Read more.
Collective superradiant decay of a tightly packed inverted quantum emitter ensemble is among the most intensely studied phenomena in quantum optics. Since the seminal work of Dicke more than half a century ago, a plethora of theoretical calculations in quantum many-body physics have followed. Widespread experimental efforts range from the microwave to the X-ray regime. Nevertheless, accurate calculations of the time dynamics of the superradiant emission pulse still remain a challenging task requiring approximate methods for large ensembles. Here, we benchmark the cumulant expansion method for describing collective superradiant decay against a newly found exact solution. The application of two variants of the cumulant expansion exhibits reliable convergence of time and magnitude of the maximum emission power with increasing truncation order. The long-term population evolution is only correctly captured for low emitter numbers, where an individual spin-based cumulant expansion proves more reliable than the collective spin-based variant. Surprisingly, odd orders show unphysical behavior. At sufficiently high spin numbers, both chosen cumulant methods agree, but still fail to reliably converge to the numerically exact result. Generally, on longer time scales the expansions substantially overestimate the remaining population. While numerically fast and efficient, cumulant expansion methods need to be treated with sufficient caution when used for long-time evolution or reliably finding steady states. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Collective Effects in Light-Matter Interactions)
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