Dr Aditi Kumar. 2025 - 2027

Dr. Kumar’s project investigates the fundamental origins of superfluorescence (SF)—a quantum phenomenon where an initially incoherent ensemble of excited dipoles spontaneously synchronizes to emit an ultrafast, intense burst of light. While conventional light sources rely on engineered external environments to enforce phase order, SF challenges this paradigm by generating macroscopically coherent states spontaneously within the material itself through strong many-body dipole interactions.

Operating even at room temperature, SF represents a highly sought-after but poorly understood regime of macroscopic quantum coherence. The primary goal of this research is to establish a comprehensive framework for how excitation density, structural disorder, and phonon interactions govern this spontaneous synchronization and its subsequent dephasing dynamics.

Utilizing a patented Transient Grating Photoluminescence Spectroscopy platform at Victoria University of Wellington, this work will deliver quantitative, picosecond-scale mapping of room-temperature SF photon statistics and coherence lifetimes. By unlocking the precise physical mechanisms that trigger and sustain this collective response, this project will validate SF as a fundamentally new, cavity-free quantum photonic degree of freedom.