Super-Radiance and the Unstable Photon Oscillator

If the damping of a simple harmonic oscillator from a thermally random force is sufficiently strong, then the oscillator may become unstable. For a photon oscillator (radiatively damped by electric dipole moments), the instability leads to a low temperature Hepp-Lieb-Preparata super-radiant phase transition. The stable oscillator regime is described by the free energy of the conventional Casimir effect. The unstable (strongly damped) oscillator has a free energy corresponding to Dicke super-radiance.