The quantum state of light in collective spontaneous emission

Collective spontaneous emission occurs when multiple quantum emitters decay into common radiation modes, resulting in enhanced or suppressed emission. Here, we find the quantum state of light collectively emitted from emitters exhibiting quantum correlations. We unveil under what conditions the quantum correlations are not lost during the emission but are instead transferred to the output light. Under these conditions, the inherent nonlinearity of the emitters can be tailored to create desired photonic states in the form of traveling single-mode pulses, such as Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill and Schrödinger-cat states. To facilitate such predictions, our work reveals the multi-mode nature of collective spontaneous emission, capturing the role of the emitters' positions, losses, interactions, and beyond-Markov dynamics on the emitted quantum state of light. We present manifestations of these effects in different physical systems, with examples in cavity-QED, waveguide-QED, and atomic arrays. Our findings suggest new paths for creating and manipulating multi-photon quantum light for bosonic codes in continuous-variable-based quantum computation, communications, and sensing.