We study the dynamics of a single collective excitation in a cold ensemble of atoms coupled to a one-dimensional waveguide. The coupling between the atoms and the photonic modes provides a coherent and a dissipative dynamics for this collective excitation. While the dissipative part accounts for the collectively enhanced and directed emission of photons, we find a remarkable universal dynamics for increasing atom numbers exhibiting several revivals under the coherent part. While this phenomenon provides a limit on the intrinsic dephasing for such a collective excitation, a setup is presented, where this remarkable universal dynamics can be explored.
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