How Superradiance Survives Molecular Noise inside Virus Capsids
Abstract
Excited organic dyes chemically bound to an icosahedral virus shell can spontaneously synchronize and emit a superradiant burst of light. The mechanism that allows it to occur at room temperature, despite collisional dephasing and inhomogeneous broadening, is not understood. Few other known low-dimensional condensed matter systems exhibit room-temperature superradiance (SR). In the fluctuation-prone environment of molecular-based systems, electron--vibrational coupling has been proposed to play a central role. Here, we addressed experimentally the existence of underdamped virus capsid phonon-like modes and theoretically their involvement in the transition from uncorrelated to cooperative emission. We find that SR-active dye-labeled capsids exhibit underdamped low-frequency oscillations that modulate the dye excited-state response, and modeling shows how such capsid motion can promote the collective polarization required for superradiant emission.
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BibTeX
@misc{li2026superradiance,
title = {{How Superradiance Survives Molecular Noise inside Virus Capsids}},
author = {Tianran Li and Irina Tsvetkova and Matthew Brauser and Amala Raj and Philip Shushkov and Bogdan Dragnea},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.00739},
eprint = {2610.00739},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.00739},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - How Superradiance Survives Molecular Noise inside Virus Capsids
AU - Tianran Li
AU - Irina Tsvetkova
AU - Matthew Brauser
AU - Amala Raj
AU - Philip Shushkov
AU - Bogdan Dragnea
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.00739
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.00739
AB - Excited organic dyes chemically bound to an icosahedral virus shell can spontaneously synchronize and emit a superradiant burst of light. The mechanism that allows it to occur at room temperature, despite collisional dephasing and inhomogeneous broadening, is not understood. Few other known low-dimensional condensed matter systems exhibit room-temperature superradiance (SR). In the fluctuation-prone environment of molecular-based systems, electron--vibrational coupling has been proposed to play a central role. Here, we addressed experimentally the existence of underdamped virus capsid phonon-like modes and theoretically their involvement in the transition from uncorrelated to cooperative emission. We find that SR-active dye-labeled capsids exhibit underdamped low-frequency oscillations that modulate the dye excited-state response, and modeling shows how such capsid motion can promote the collective polarization required for superradiant emission.
ER -