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Physical Review A

Effect of atomic decay in degenerate two-photon micromasers

E. S. Guerra, J. Plon, Nicim Zagury

Published Sep 1, 1993• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study the effect of the atomic decay and the pumping statistics in degenerate two-photon oscillators. We obtain an expression for the gain that is valid for all values of the atomic lifetime. Numerical results are presented for regular and Poissonian pumping statistics.
DOI
10.1103/physreva.48.2261

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According to the exact solution of a two-level atomic system interacting with a single-mode field in a cavity and including a pumping mechanism, sub-Poissonian photon statistics can be generated either by regular pumping or by resonance absorption of the lower level. When the atomic lifetime is much smaller than the interaction time (${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{\mathit{a}\mathit{b}}$\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremath{\gg}1), which corresponds to a usual laser system, the sub-Poissonian photon distribution can be obtained only by regular pumping. On the other hand, if the atomic lifetime is comparable with the interaction time (${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{\mathit{a}\mathit{b}}$\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremath{\le}1), the sub-Poissonian photon distribution can be generated by both mechanisms.
The statistics of the beam of excited atoms that pumps a micromaser influence the photon number distribution of the cavity field. Of the cases studied so far, regular injection statistics minimize the number fluctuations and Poisson statistics maximize them. Here we extend these studies in two directions. Previous master equations describing sub-Poissonian injection statistics were derived by using standard reservoir theory. Recently, corrections to these equations have been found that involve the commutator of the gain and loss operators. Describing the system by a discrete map, we can avoid the approximations inherent in reservoir theory. The results are compared to those of the master equation. Differences are found to be small for large photon number but increasingly important for decreasing photon number and pump beam intensity, indicating the breakdown of reservoir theory in this regime. We give an approximate expression for the photon number distribution for weak damping and discuss its connection with semiclassical theory. Finally, we generalize our treatment for super-Poissonian pump fluctuations.
We study degenerate two-photon micromasers pumped by cascade three-level atoms, where each atomic energy level has a different linewidth. Our model allows us to recover the ordinary two-photon micromaser situation when these widths vanish. In the limit of large linewidths we obtain a two-photon laser model. We show that trapping states are extremely sensitive to atomic decay, even when the decay time is small in comparison to the transit time through the cavity. Unlike the one-photon micromaser, they are sensitive to the linewidth of the upper, as well as the lower energy level. We have also studied the effects of atomic decay on the starting time of micromasers and on the noise. We found that there is a significant difference between the behavior of two-photon micromasers and lasers as we change the ratio of the widths of the upper and lower levels.
We present a theory of the micromaser including the effect of the arrival-time statistics of the active atoms in the theoretical treatments. Our starting point is an approach that explicitly incorporates the effect of pump statistics into the dynamical description of lasers and masers. We show that the application of standard laser theory to the micromaser is tantamount to the tacit assumption of Poissonian arrival-time statistics. Hence standard laser theory and the theory of the micromaser are, in general, not equivalent, but the latter contains the former, as a limiting case, for completely random arrival times. We show, as an application, that the steady-state value of the average photon number (first moment) is essentially unaffected by the pump statistics since it depends only on the flux of active atoms (average number of atoms entering the cavity per unit time) provided the flux is constant. The intensity fluctuations (second moment), however, exhibit a stronger dependence on the pump statistics. In particular, for sub-Poissonian pump statistics the sub-Poissonian character of the field is enhanced.