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Chinese Physics Letters

Influence of Atomic Motion on a Microlaser in an Optical Standing-Wave Cavity

Jingtao Zhang, Feng Xun-Li, Zhang Wen-Qi, Xu Zhi-Zhan

Published Apr 18, 2002• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study the microlaser in an optical standing-wave cavity injected with two-level atoms. The results have shown the obvious influence of atomic centre-of-mass motion on the microlaser, such as the photon distribution, the linewidth and the frequency shift. It was found that when the momentum of atoms is comparable to that of photons, the influence of atomic motion is dominated and the number of photons in the microlaser can be greatly enhanced, owing to part of the atomic kinetic energy being transferred to the resonator. This work provides a comparison of the related studies on the atomic motion under special assumptions.

DOI
10.1088/0256-307x/19/5/319

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We study the microlaser in an optical standing-wave cavity injected with two-level atoms. The results have shown the obvious influence of atomic centre-of-mass motion on the microlaser, such as the photon distribution, the linewidth and the frequency shift. It was found that when the momentum of atoms is comparable to that of photons, the influence of atomic motion is dominated and the number of photons in the microlaser can be greatly enhanced, owing to part of the atomic kinetic energy being transferred to the resonator. This work provides a comparison of the related studies on the atomic motion under special assumptions.
We study the amplification of a resonant standing-wave light field due to the interaction with a beam of monovelocity two-level atoms moving in the Raman-Nath regime and in the Bragg regime. The atomic density is low so that, at most, one atom is inside the cavity at a time. This system is very similar to the well-known micromaser but it is operating in the optical region of the field frequencies. Therefore, the situation corresponds to a microlaser. Unlike the micromaser system, the momentum transfer between the atoms and photons in the microlaser essentially effects the center-of-mass motion of the atoms and the evolution of the field.
We have achieved the first realization of a single atom microlaser, a laser oscillator with only one atom in an optical resonator. In the experiment a beam of two-level barium atoms traverses an ultrahigh Q single-mode cavity. The atoms are inverted by a (pi) -pulse field before they enter the cavity. Laser oscillation ((lambda) equals 791 nm) has been observed, with the mean number of atoms inside the mode <N> as small as 0.1, resulting in the mean number of photons in the mode <N> or 0.14. To understand the results quantitatively we used a fully-quantized one-atom microlaser theory adapted from its counterpart micromaser theory. The present theory was found to be in good agreement with the data for small <N> and <n>. Discrepancy between experiment and theory was observed for <n> very much greater than 1 and <N> approximately equal to 1. This discrepancy may be explained by the standing-wave nature of the cavity mode, in combination with the saturation effect occurring at large cavity photon number, as well as by the breakdown of single-atom interaction assumption in the theory for <N> greater than or equal to 1.
A semiclassical model of the force and momentum diffusion on a point particle is used to describe the motion of a two-level atom strongly coupled to a single Gaussian cavity mode. The effects of the momentum diffusion on the motion of an atom in a cavity are investigated in a regime similar to that of the experiment performed by Mabuchi et al. [Opt. Lett. 21, 1393 (1996)]. It is found that a slow atom quickly develops significant velocities along the cavity axis. The limited bandwidth in the experiment of Mabuchi et al. means that the full intensity signal due to atomic motion in the standing wave is filtered leading to the apparently smaller velocities observed. It is shown that a negative detuning of the laser and cavity from the atomic resonance would lead to nonzero dipole forces and significantly reduced velocities along the standing wave. An analysis of the intensity signal with a larger bandwidth is proposed, which would track the velocity of the atom along the cavity axis. These results are compared with a Monte Carlo wave-function simulation similar to that used to treat Doppler cooling.
In the observation of multiple thresholds in the cavity-quantum electrodynamics microlaser there was deviation from the result predicted by uniform atom-cavity coupling theory, notably a frequency-pushing behavior. We analyze in the semiclassical limit the tilted injection of atoms, originally used to achieve a spatially uniform atom-cavity coupling, and show that the deviation originates from the interference between the induced dipole moments associated with two traveling-wave components of a standing-wave cavity mode. The criteria for sufficiently reduced interference and thus uniform atom-cavity interactions are derived in analytic considerations and verified by numerical calculation. Our analysis is well supported by experimental data.