Consider  two-level systems at different positions in space.
Maxwell's equations lead to a coupling among all the optical resonances since the field emitted from a specific resonance interferes with the emitted fields of all other resonances.
As a result, the system is characterized by  eigenmodes originating from the radiatively coupled optical resonances.
A spectacular situation arises if  identical two-level systems are regularly arranged with distances that equals an integer multiple of , where  is the optical wavelength.
In this case, the emitted fields of all resonances interfere constructively and the system behaves effectively as a single system with a -times stronger optical polarization.
Since the intensity of the emitted electromagnetic field is proportional to the squared modulus of the polarization, it scales initially as .
Due to the cooperativity that originates from the coherent coupling of the subsystems, the radiative decay rate  is increased by , i.e.,  where  is the radiative decay of a single two-level system.
Thus the coherent optical polarization decays -times faster proportional to  than that of an isolated system.
As a result, the time integrated emitted field intensity scales as , since the initial  factor is multiplied by  which arises from the time integral over the enhanced radiative decay.
This effect of superradiance has been demonstrated by monitoring the decay of the exciton polarization in suitably arranged semiconductor multiple quantum wells.
Due to superradiance introduced by the coherent radiative coupling among the quantum wells, the decay rate increases proportional to the number of quantum wells and is thus significantly more rapid than for a single quantum well.
The theoretical analysis of this phenomenon requires a consistent solution of Maxwell's equations together with the SBEs.