Directional emission of single photons from small atomic samples

We provide a formalism to describe deterministic emission of single photons with tailored spatial and temporal profiles from a regular array of multilevel atoms. We assume that a single collective excitation is initially shared by all the atoms in a metastable atomic state and that this state is coupled by a classical laser field to an optically excited state which rapidly decays to the ground atomic state. Our model accounts for the different field polarization components via reabsorption and emission of light by the Zeeman manifold of optically excited states. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.87.023821