Collective nuclear excitation dynamics in mono-modal x-ray waveguides

Ensembles of identical atoms exhibit peculiar collective properties in their interaction with radiation depending on geometry and environment where they are embedded in. A remarkably clean and versatile platform to study collective effects in resonant light scattering are Mössbauer nuclei placed in planar x-ray waveguides. Here we conceive and demonstrate experimentally distinct temporal emission characteristics in these systems, ranging from a tunable accelerated exponential decay all the way to a pronounced oscillatory emission pattern, depending on the waveguide geometry and mode of excitation. The observed temporal and spatial emission characteristics of the collectively excited nuclear state in the waveguide – the nuclear exciton – are well reproduced by a unified theoretical model. Our findings pave the way for applications ranging from fundamental studies of cooperative emission at hard x-ray frequencies up to new methods of narrowband x-ray control via the engineering of collective radiation patterns.