Influence of initial states on memory effects: A study of early-time superradiance

The initial state of a quantum system can significantly influence its future dynamics, especially in non-Markovain quantum processes due to the environmental memory effects. Based on a previous work of ours, we propose a method to quantify the memory effects of a non-Markovian quantum process conditioned on a particular system initial state. We apply our method to study the early-time dynamics of a superradiance model where N atoms (the system) interacting with a single-mode vacuum cavity (the environment) with several types of initial states. We find that the value of the memory effects in the early-time regime is half the environmental photon number for the (dephased) Dicke states. Besides, the memory effects, the environmental photon number and the degree of superradiance can be simultaneously enhanced by the coherence or entanglement of some initial states. In our study, the transitions from non-superradiant initial states to superradiant ones are always accompanied by the enhancement of memory effects, showing the importance of memory effects in superradiance.