Collective radiation from distant emitters

Abstract: Waveguides allow for direct coupling of emitters separated by large distances, offering a path to connect remote quantum systems. However, when facing the distances needed for practical applications, retardation effects due to the finite speed of light are often overlooked. Previous works studied the non-Markovian dynamics of emitters with retardation, but the properties of the radiated field remain mostly unexplored. By considering a toy model of two distant two-level atoms coupled through a waveguide, we observe that the spectrum of the radiated field exhibits non-Markovian features such as linewidth broadening beyond standard superradiance, or narrow Fano resonance-like peaks. We also show that the dipole-dipole interaction decays exponentially with distance as a result of retardation, with the range determined by the atomic linewidth. We discuss a proof-of-concept implementation of our results in a superconducting circuit platform.