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Physical Review A

Quantum-noise reduction in Raman lasers: Effects of collisions, population trapping, and Doppler shifts

K. J. Schernthanner, Helmut Ritsch

Published May 1, 1994• 16 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We investigate the effect of collisional broadening, of population trapping and repumping, and of detuning of the atomic levels on the quantum-statistical properties of Raman laser radiation. We find that under suitably chosen operating conditions the effect of such additional incoherent relaxation mechanisms for the atomic polarization and populations can be made very small. One obtains highly nonclassical values for the Mandel Q parameter and the output-intensity fluctuation spectrum S(\ensuremath{\omega}) for experimentally reasonable parameters. Including detuning of the laser and the pump light from the atomic levels in certain cases can lead to further narrowing of the intracavity photon number distribution, as compared to the resonant case, down to a Mandel Q parameter close to the optimum possible value of Q=-1. A subsequent preliminary analysis prevails that inhomogeneous Doppler broadening of the atomic lines, both for collinear and for counterpropagating pump and laser light, is not detrimental to the nonclassical intracavity state.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.49.4126

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Quantum Electronics•Feb 28, 2009•0 citations
We investigate the effect of collisional broadening, of population trapping and repumping, and of detuning of the atomic levels on the quantum-statistical properties of Raman laser radiation. We find that under suitably chosen operating conditions the effect of such additional incoherent relaxation mechanisms for the atomic polarization and populations can be made very small. One obtains highly nonclassical values for the Mandel Q parameter and the output-intensity fluctuation spectrum S(\ensuremath{\omega}) for experimentally reasonable parameters. Including detuning of the laser and the pump light from the atomic levels in certain cases can lead to further narrowing of the intracavity photon number distribution, as compared to the resonant case, down to a Mandel Q parameter close to the optimum possible value of Q=-1. A subsequent preliminary analysis prevails that inhomogeneous Doppler broadening of the atomic lines, both for collinear and for counterpropagating pump and laser light, is not detrimental to the nonclassical intracavity state.
Detuning the laser and the pump light from the atomic transitions in a three-level Raman laser can lead to a strong stabilization of the intracavity photon number. The corresponding Mandel Q parameter attains highly non-classical values very close to its optimum of Q=-1 and thus is significantly smaller than for the resonant case or the regularly pumped laser Q>- 1/2 . Subsequently we show that inhomogeneous Doppler broadening of the atomic lines does not drastically influence the non-classical behaviour of the intracavity field as long as the laser is operated sufficiently far above threshold.
We demonstrate that the intensity fluctuations of a laser with a Raman gain medium, described by a large number of independent 3-level atoms, can drop well below the shot noise level. In the limit of a good cavity, where one can adiabatically eliminate the atoms, we find an optimum Mandel Q parameter of Q ≈ −1/2 over a large range of parameters, when the laser is operated well above threshold. This leads to a strong suppression of the low-frequency quantum fluctuations in the laser output. In addition we find that due to suppression of spontaneous emission into the lasing mode, the spectral linewidth of the emitted light can be reduced below the Schawlow-Townes limit by more than one order of magnitude.
We investigate the influence of pump bandwidth and pump intensity noise on the quantum-noise properties of lasers based on a Raman atomic-gain medium, which recently have been predicted to emit narrow-bandwidth, sub-shot-noise light. We show that, using finite-bandwidth pump light, the predicted limit to the laser bandwidth can still be well below the value given by the Shawlow-Townes formula and much smaller than the input bandwidth. The laser intensity noise is shown to be relatively insensitive to input phase noise as long as the Rabi frequency on the lasing transition is large compared to the bandwidth. On the other hand, even small amounts of pump amplitude noise tend to increase strongly the laser spectral bandwidth, especially in the high-intensity limit. Including dynamic pump-noise reduction through multilevel atomic cycling in our model leads to a Mandel Q parameter value even below Q=-1/2, together with a significant enhancement of the output intensity-noise squeezing.
Using an extension of the Scully—Lamb laser theory we show that by insertion of nonlinear elements in the cavity, laser light with nonclassical sub—Poissonian photon statistics can be generated. For an N—photon absorber in the limit of small saturation the variance of the photon number distribution can be reduced by a factor of (+1/N) compared to Poissonian limit of the usual laser. When we generalize the type of such nonlinear elements to the case of a nonlinear feedback or Raman type nonlinear transition, the noise in the laser intensity can be reduced even further and approach the ideal limit, characterized by a Mandel Q parameter of Q = —1. Furthermore we show how this noise reduction via nonlinearities can be combined with a regular pump mechanism, which recently has been sugessted as a way to generate sub—Poissonian light. It turns out that in certain configurations the effect of both methods can be combined. Finally we show how this nonclassical behaviour is also reflected in a reduction of the output intensity power spectra below the shot noise level.
The results of the quantum theory of a laser given by Riska and Stenholm (see ibid., vol.3, p.536 (1970)) for the case of inhomogeneous broadening and detuning are re-derived by avoiding the Doppler limit approximation to show the exact influence of relaxation parameters on the theory. The threshold condition is seen to be dependent on gamma ab /ku where gamma ab is the relaxation parameter and ku the Doppler parameter. Its value is found to be higher than earlier results. It is noted that the photon distribution function at resonance is much closer to the corresponding distribution obtained from exact calculations for the tuned case. The photon number at the peak of the distribution curve is much lower than earlier values for comparable situations.
The influence of phase memory effects on the spectrum of resonance Raman scattering by three-level atoms with the Λ configuration of levels experiencing collisions with buffer gas atoms in a strong monochromatic radiation field is studied theoretically. Systems with a small Doppler broadening compared to the collision frequency (large buffer gas pressures) are analysed in the general case of an arbitrary change (from complete change to complete preservation) in the phase memory at any of three transitions in the Λ system. It is shown that in the absence of the collision relaxation of the low-frequency coherence at the transitions between two lower levels of the Λ system, the radiation scattering spectrum has a spectrally narrow component at the Raman frequency, which, despite the homogeneous broadening of the absorption line, exhibits a strongly pronounced anisotropy. In the direction, close to the propagation direction of exciting radiation, this line maximally narrows down. It is significant that upon optical pumping to the level unaffected by a strong field the resonance Raman spectrum noticeably differs from the spectrum in the case of the probe field. A simple expression is proposed for calculating the degree of the phase memory preservation in collisions from the relative amplitude of the Raman resonance.