OPTICAL SUPERRADIANCE - NEW IDEAS AND NEW EXPERIMENTS

The comprehensive treatment of pulse propagation, amplification and generation in multiatomic resonance media is presented. The distinctive features of soliton propagation in resonance media of finite length are studied. The principle characteristics of lethargic and exponential amplification are compared. We take into account the effect of em field reflection at the active volume boundaries during superradiance and superluminescence pulse generation and show that pulse width depends on the reflectivity coefficients in qualitatively different manner for these two regimes. It is this feature that enables us to introduce the criteria of generation regime. The distinctive features of collective superradiance effect are analyzed. The experimental and theoretical studies of radiofrequency superradiance by a system of nuclear spins are reviewed.