More General States of an Atom in a Laser Field

Niels J. Kylstra, O. Latinne, Martin Dörr +5 more

Atomic states may be embedded in the continuum by dressing the atom by an intense laser field. This is often referred to as a laser induced continuum structure (LICS) [1]. This continuum, in general, also has a natural structure due to the doubly excited states, or autoionizing states, of the atom. We have considered the situation in which a complex atom or ion is subjected to an intense laser field such that the LICS states and autoionizing states occur simultaneously. We have have found that, by tuning the frequency and intensity of the field, the states can become degenerate, i.e. have the same position and width.

Marvin H. Mittleman

Hans‐Jürgen Briegel, Berthold‐Georg Englert, Marlan O. Scully

In lasers with strong atom-field coupling, Rabi-type oscillation effects are apparent not only in the atomic inversion and the photon number, but also in the field correlation function. Whereas the former play an important role in the standard micromaser with Poissonian injection, the latter are particularly relevant in lasers with non-Poissonian atomic injection. In such lasers, there is generally no steady state in the usual sense, and the field correlation function is really a two-point correlation. We analyze the field correlation function and the spectrum under these circumstances. Our analysis uses a stochastic simulation as well as an approximate analytical description. For lasers with a regular injection, this analysis explains the occurrence of a multipeak spectrum in simple terms. In the more general situation, the spectrum is related to the counting statistics of the atoms. Conditions for an experimental realization are discussed. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.

Nikolai L. Manakov, Vitalii D Ovsiannikov, Л. П. Рапопорт

Jonathan A. Jones, Dieter Jaksch

S. Ya. Kilin, T. B. Karlovich

Based on the approximation of strong correlations between an atom and an intracavity field, which implies the equal probabilities of finding the atom in the ground state and n photons in the field and of finding the atom in an excited state and n −1 photons in the field, it is shown that the conditional states of a field generated by a single-atom laser are described by the diagonal part of the generalized coherent Mittag-Leffler state. The quasi-distributions P and Q of the intracavity-field probability amplitude are found, and the boundedness of the Glauber function on a segment is shown. The possibility of inversionless lasing is demonstrated, and the absence of a lasing threshold is found for some region of parameters. The regimes of generation of the amplitude-squeezed states of the field are studied and the parameters of the system providing the maximum squeezing are determined. It is shown that the atom-field states are entangled at weak pump intensities.