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Physical Review A

Quantum Theory of Light Propagation in Amplifying Media

Thomas Von Foerster, Roy J. Glauber

Published Apr 1, 1971• 56 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A simple model of a traveling-wave parametric amplifier is discussed in quantum-mechanical terms. The amplifier consists of a slab of Raman-active material, illuminated on one face by an intense laser beam that serves as the pump mode; an optical-phonon oscillation serves as the idler mode, and the scattered Stokes light occupies the signal mode. With only a few simplifying assumptions, it is possible to solve the equation of motion for the signal field operator exactly. For large times, both an amplified steady signal and the quantum noise contributed by the material assume simple steady states in an amplifier of finite length. The transient and asymptotic behaviors of the signal and noise intensities are found, together with the corresponding first-order correlation functions. The quasiprobability distribution which specifies the complete density operator for the electric field strength of the amplified signal is also derived.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.3.1484

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Quantum theory of the far-off-resonance continuous-wave Raman laser: Heisenberg-Langevin approach

Peter A. Roos, Sytil Murphy, Lei S. Meng +4 more

We present the quantum theory of the far-off-resonance continuous-wave Raman laser using the Heisenberg-Langevin approach. We show that the simplified quantum Langevin equations for this system are mathematically identical to those of the nondegenerate optical parametric oscillator in the time domain with the following associations: pump $\ensuremath{\leftrightarrow}$ pump, Stokes $\ensuremath{\leftrightarrow}$ signal, and Raman coherence $\ensuremath{\leftrightarrow}$ idler. We derive analytical results for both the steady-state behavior and the time-dependent noise spectra, using standard linearization procedures. In the semiclassical limit, these results match with previous purely semiclassical treatments, which yield excellent agreement with experimental observations. The analytical time-dependent results predict perfect photon statistics conversion from the pump to the Stokes and nonclassical behavior under certain operational conditions.

Physical Review A•Jul 2, 2003•9 citations
A simple model of a traveling-wave parametric amplifier is discussed in quantum-mechanical terms. The amplifier consists of a slab of Raman-active material, illuminated on one face by an intense laser beam that serves as the pump mode; an optical-phonon oscillation serves as the idler mode, and the scattered Stokes light occupies the signal mode. With only a few simplifying assumptions, it is possible to solve the equation of motion for the signal field operator exactly. For large times, both an amplified steady signal and the quantum noise contributed by the material assume simple steady states in an amplifier of finite length. The transient and asymptotic behaviors of the signal and noise intensities are found, together with the corresponding first-order correlation functions. The quasiprobability distribution which specifies the complete density operator for the electric field strength of the amplified signal is also derived.
The propagation of a strong coherent "pump" wave traveling through a resonant medium is discussed. The medium is assumed to consist of identical stationary atoms, and the pump-wave frequency is assumed to coincide exactly with the resonance frequency for transitions between a particular pair of atomic states. A previously developed theory of the response of a strongly driven atom to a weak nearly resonant "signal" field is used to deduce the existence of a coupling between any two waves travelling parallel to the pump wave whose (nearly equal) frequencies sum to twice the pump-wave frequency. In the limit of very intense (highly saturating) pump fields, the coupling between the two waves of nearby frequencies leads to amplification of both waves if their frequencies lie within an interval about the pump-wave frequency equal to the Rabi frequency of population inversion. The basic process, which is roughly described by travelling-wave parametric-amplifier equations of motion, consists of the absorption of two pump-field photons followed by their emission at different nearby frequencies, and thus implies a frequency instability of the initially coherent pump wave.
Raman scattering from a great number of phonon modes is described from a quantum-statistical point of view within the standing-wave model. The master equation for the completely quantum case, including laser pump depletion and stochastic coupling of Stokes and anti-Stokes modes, is derived and converted to classical equations: either into a generalized Fokker-Planck equation and an equation of motion for the characteristic function or into the master equation in Fock representation. These two approaches are developed both in linear and nonlinear regime. A detailed analysis of scattering into Stokes and anti-Stokes modes in linear regime, i.e., under parametric approximation, is presented. The existence of s-parametrized quasiprobability distributions, in particular the Glauber-Sudarshan P-function, is investigated. An analysis of Raman scattering into separate Stokes and anti-Stokes modes in nonlinear regime, thus including pump depletion, is given. The master equation in Fock representation is solved exactly for the complete density matrix using the Laplace transform method. Short-time solutions, steady-state solutions and approximate compact form solutions are obtained. Relations between the quasidistribution approach based on the Fokker-Planck equation and the density matrix approach based on the master equation in Fock representation are presented. The photocount distribution and its factorial moments as well as variances and extremal variances of quadratures are calculated in both approaches giving the basis for the analysis of the quantum properties of radiation such as sub-Poissonian photon-counting statistics and squeezing. Various statistical moments obtained from numerical calculations utilizing our exact solutions, from the approximate relations for short times, and those obtained under parametric approximation are compared.
We derive the fundamental noise properties of a parametric amplifier (paramp) which is driven by a monochromatic pump but which has many lossy signal and idler modes. We use a quantum-mechanical approach similar to that employed by Louisell and co-workers in their treatment of paramps and lasers with lossless modes. Our results are not directly deducible from the lossless mode analysis, but they do give the same limiting noise temperature as that analysis. This minimum noise temperature is the same as that of an ideal laser. In fact, we find that one can always design a laser whose field correlation functions would be the same as those of any given paramp. Many results for laser noise in various configurations can be carried over directly and applied to parametric amplifiers by using correspondence substitutions which we set down. For example, in analogy to Pound's description of the maser (in terms of a Nyquist theorem extended to negative temperatures), the calculation of paramp noise is found to be equivalent to applying Nyquist's theorem to both the active and passive elements in the (classically computed) equivalent circuit of a signal mode of interest. From this one obtains the spectra of effective noise generators which, when amplified in the circuit, duplicate the "quantum" as well as thermal noise that is present in the output. The Nyquist theorem is extended to apply to each active element by simply taking the element temperatures to be minus the real temperature of the corresponding idler mode (whose parametric coupling into the signal circuit gives rise to that element) multiplied by the ratio of the pump minus the idler to the idler frequencies.
This thesis is primarily a theoretical study of degenerate parametric amplification as a means of generating squeezed-state light. i) A wideband traveling-wave formalism is developed for analyzing quantum mechanically a degenerate parametric amplifier. The formalism is based on spatial differential equations — spatial Langevin equations — that propagate temporal Fourier components of the field through the nonlinear medium. In addition to the parametric nonlinearity, the Langevin equations include absorption and associated fluctuations, dispersion, and pump quantum fluctuations. The dominant effects of dispersion and pump quantum fluctuations on the squeezing produced by a degenerate parametric amplifier are analyzed. ii) The wideband formalism of i) is used to carry out a more detailed analysis of the effects of phase mismatching. With the assumption of a lossless medium and a classical pump, we find that parametric amplification is capable of generating squeezed-state light over a wide band if materials with large χ(2) nonlinearities can be found, and that the squeezing bandwidth can be enhanced by phase mismatching away from degeneracy. iii) We consider again the effect of pump quantum fluctuations on the squeezing produced by parametric amplification. We perform discrete-mode calculations for a parametric amplifier with a quantum pump, and discuss some of the limitations of calculations of this sort in quantum optics. We derive stochastic differential equations (SDEs) for one- and two-mode parametric amplifiers, and from them obtain an iterative solution showing that pump quantum fluctuations impose a limitation on the degree of squeezing obtainable from a parametric amplifier. iv) A possible application of squeezing is considered; in particular, we study the effects of squeezing the intracavity noise in a laser oscillator. We solve the classical noise problem of a realistic laser model by making a bold — and possibly unrealizable — assumption, that the in-phase and quadrature Langevin sources which are responsible for the "noisiness" of the laser can be squeezed. We show that the effect of squeezing the in-phase quadrature is to reduce the phase noise, including the linewidth, of the laser but, due to amplitude-phase coupling, not to eliminate them altogether.
The analysis of the quantum-mechanical parametric amplifier begun in the preceding paper is extended to describe the joint quantum state of the two interacting modes of oscillation of the system. Equations are derived for the time evolution of the Schr\"odinger density operator. Comparison with classical theory is made by describing the state of the quantum-mechanical system by means of the PPP representation. The time evolution of the weight function $P(\ensuremath{\alpha}, \ensuremath{\beta}, t)$ for this representation, and of the corresponding Wigner distribution function $W(\ensuremath{\alpha}, \ensuremath{\beta}, t)$, is found. A decoupled form for the equations of motion for the field variables is exhibited which simplifies the solutions for these functions. It is shown that the amplification process gives rise to a correlation between the two mode amplitudes which becomes exceedingly strong with increasing time. The relation of this correlation to the time development of the functions $P(\ensuremath{\alpha}, \ensuremath{\beta}, t)$ and $W(\ensuremath{\alpha}, \ensuremath{\beta}, t)$ is discussed.
We present the quantum theory of the far-off-resonance continuous-wave Raman laser using the Heisenberg-Langevin approach. We show that the simplified quantum Langevin equations for this system are mathematically identical to those of the nondegenerate optical parametric oscillator in the time domain with the following associations: pump $\ensuremath{\leftrightarrow}$ pump, Stokes $\ensuremath{\leftrightarrow}$ signal, and Raman coherence $\ensuremath{\leftrightarrow}$ idler. We derive analytical results for both the steady-state behavior and the time-dependent noise spectra, using standard linearization procedures. In the semiclassical limit, these results match with previous purely semiclassical treatments, which yield excellent agreement with experimental observations. The analytical time-dependent results predict perfect photon statistics conversion from the pump to the Stokes and nonclassical behavior under certain operational conditions.