Many-body decay of an extended collection of two-level systems remains an open problem. Here we investigate whether an array of qubits coupled to a one-dimensional bus undergoes Dicke superradiance. This is the process by which a perfectly inverted system synchronizes as it collapses and generates correlations between qubits via dissipation. This releases all the energy in the form of rapid photon bursts. For both ordered and disordered ensembles, we derive the minimum conditions for bursts to occur as a function of the number of qubits, the waveguide chirality, and the optical depth of a single qubit. Many-body superradiation arises because the initial fluctuations that trigger the emission are amplified through a decay process. We show that this avalanche-like behavior leads to dynamic spontaneous symmetry breaking, with most photons being emitted into left- or right-propagating optical modes, giving rise to emergent chirality. Superradiant bursts could be a definitive weapon to generate correlated photon states of exotic quantum statistics. This physics can be explored in a variety of settings, from atoms close to nanofibers to superconducting qubits coupled to transmission lines.
