Superradiance and flux conservation

The theoretical foundations of the phenomenon known as superradiance still continue to attract considerable attention. Despite many valiant attempts at pedagogically clear presentations, the effect nevertheless still continues to generate some significant confusion. Part of the confusion arises from the fact that superradiance in a quantum field theory context is not the same as superradiance (superfluorescence) in some condensed matter contexts; part of the confusion arises from traditional but sometimes awkward normalization conventions, and part is due to sometimes unnecessary confusion between fluxes and probabilities. We shall argue that the key point underlying the effect is flux conservation (and, in the presence of dissipation, a controlled amount of flux nonconservation), and that attempting to phrase things in terms of reflection and transmission probabilities only works in the absence of superradiance. To help clarify the situation we present a simple exactly solvable toy model exhibiting both superradiance and damping.