Observation of Single-Photon Superradiance and the Cooperative Lamb Shift in an Extended Sample of Cold Atoms

Abstract

We report direct, time-resolved observations of single-photon superradiance in a highly extended, elliptical sample of cold ^{87}Rb atoms. The observed rapid decay rate is accompanied by its counterpart, the cooperative Lamb shift. The rate of the strongly directional decay, and the associated shift, scale linearly with the number of atoms, demonstrating the collective nature of the observed quantities.