Room Temperature Superfluorescence

The formation of coherent macroscopic states leads to exotic phenomena such as superconductivity, Bose-Einstein condensation, superfluidity, and superfluorescence. To this day, all these collective quantum phenomena have been observed at stringent conditions such as extremely low temperatures or high magnetic fields. Achieving high-temperature coherence is a big challenge due to dephasing induced by thermal noise in the ambient. Here we report the <b><i>first observation of room temperature superfluorescence</i></b> in a solid-state material in the perovskite family. We show that as the temperature increases from 78 K to 300 K, the dephasing time shortens, but optically excited oscillators can still form a macroscopically coherent superradiant state. This high-temperature superfluorescence clearly indicates that there is an intrinsic mechanism in these material systems that protects the coherence. Here I will present our experimental results and the model explaining the high-temperature superfluorescence in these materials. Our discovery opens a new path for reading, writing, and manipulating quantum information at practical temperatures, which will pave the way for future quantum technologies.