Bose-Einstein partition statistics of photons in a superradiant microcavity

Summary form only given. The process of two atom superradiance has been investigated by trapping two dipoles at a mutual transverse distance R within a planar high-finesse microcavity. The peculiar time characteristics of superradiance consists of the doubling of the spontaneous emission rate with respect that of a single dipole if R is lower than the transverse extension of the confined electromagnetic field mode, l/sub c/. Most important, in the present work the adoption of the microcavity technique allowed the first demonstration of the spatial counterpart of the superradiance process by the discovery of an unexpected collective quantum statistical distribution of the photons emitted by the microcavity as a whole, over the two allowed external modes k and k'.