  We characterise the spontaneous emission time and direction from small
numbers of dipole-coupled two-level atoms (2LAs) in the presence of incident
fields. We show how to use adiabatic passage to admit population transfer
between states in the one-quantum subspace for two and three 2LAs. Our method
is a multi-atom generalisation of stimulated-Raman-adiabatic-passage (STIRAP)
for a single multi-level atom. We use numerical results to justify an ansatz
that enables us to give analytical expressions for the directional emission
which depends on the incident fields. Our results admit a characterisation of
the efficacy of population transfer in small numbers of dipole-coupled 2LAs,
and are applicable to proof-of-principle experiments involving dipole-coupled
2LAs.
