VIRTUAL PHOTONS: From Dicke’s Super- and Sub-radiance and Lamb’s Shift to Zhu’s Theory and Pan’s Experiment

The emission and re-absorption of virtual photons has many surprising features. For example, single photon Dicke superradiance [1] can be destroyed by the many-atom Lamb shift [2, 3]. Subradiance [4] is even more sensitive to virtual photon effect but the problems can be controlled [5]. In much the same way, the beautiful theory and experiment of Zhu [6] and Pan [7] show how virtual emission and absorption can lead to the cancellation of spontaneous emission.

[1] Scully et al., PRL 96, 010501 (2006)

[2] Scully PRL 102, 143601 (2009)

[3] Scully and Svidzinsky, Science 328, 1239 (2010)

[4] Scully PRL 115, 243602 (2015)

[5] Cai et al., PRA 93, 053804 (2016)

[6] Zhu and Scully, PRL 76, 388 (1996)

[7] He et al., PRL 114, 097402 (2015)