The cold atom micromaser in a vertical configuration

J. Martin, Thierry Bastin

John Martin, Solano, E., Nicim Zagury +1 more

John Martin, Thierry Bastin

Zhi‐Ming Zhang, Lin-sheng He

Thierry Bastin, John Martin

The quantum theory of the cold-atom micromaser including the effects of gravity is considered. We show that gravity does not break the special properties of the induced emission probability for the micromaser in the cold atom regime and rather new effects are predicted. In particular, we show that the cavity acts in the gravity field as an additional repulsive and attractive potential, resulting in quasibound states of the atomic motion. This feature gives rise to fine resonances in the induced emission probability that are not restricted to any particular cavity mode function, in contrast to the usual cold-atom micromaser. It is also shown that the atom is able to emit a photon inside the cavity, though classically it does not reach the interaction region. Predictions about the photon number statistics when the cavity is pumped by a flux of excited atoms are finally given. Unusual highly nonclassical ``dragon'' distributions are still predicted in the vertical geometry.

John Martin, Thierry Bastin

The quantum theory of the cold atom micromaser including the effects of gravity is established in the general case where the cavity mode and the atomic transition frequencies are detuned. We show that atoms which classically would not reach the interaction region are able to emit a photon inside the cavity. The system turns out to be extremely sensitive to the detuning and in particular to its sign. A method to solve the equations of motion for non resonant atom-field interaction and arbitrary cavity modes is presented.