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Physical Review A

Two-photon squeezed laser with long-lived atoms

Ashish Agarwal, Rupamanjari Ghosh

Published Aug 1, 1994• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present the quantum theory of a two-photon nonlinear laser when the lasing medium consists of long-lived atoms. There is no population inversion in this laser, but the system exhibits gain arising from the four-wave-mixing process in an active nonlinear medium. The strong phase correlation between the photons generated in four-wave mixing leads to a narrower than usual linewidth of the two-photon laser far above threshold. The laser output is also squeezed. Systems with a higher lifetime have the advantage of requiring a lower pump to reach the threshold of laser oscillation. We give explicit solutions for the noise spectrum of the intensity difference of the two output modes in the steady state and show that it is highly squeezed even for non-Markov systems.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.50.1950

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We develop a nonlinear theory of a two-photon correlated-spontaneous-emission laser (CEL) by using an effective interaction Hamiltonian for a two-level system coupled by a two-photon transition. Assuming that the active atoms are prepared initially in a coherent superposition of two atomic levels involved in the two-photon transition, we derive a master equation for the field-density operator by using our quantum theory for coherently pumped lasers. The steady-state properties of the two-photon CEL are studied by converting the field master equation into a Fokker-Planck equation for the antinormal-ordering Q representation of the field-density operator. Because of the injected atomic coherence, the drift and diffusion coefficients become phase sensitive. This leads to laser phase locking and an extra two-photon CEL gain. The laser field can build up from a vacuum in the no-population-inversion region, in contrast to an ordinary two-photon laser for which triggering is needed. We find an approximate steady-state solution of the Q representation for the laser field, which consists of two identical peaks of elliptical type. We calculate the phase variance and, for any given mean photon number, obtain the minimum variance in the phase quadrature as a function of the initial atomic variables. Squeezing of the quantum noise in the phase quadrature is found and it exhibits the following features: (1) it is possible only when the laser intensity is smaller than a certain value; (2) it becomes most significant for small mean photon number, which is achievable in the no-population-inversion region; and (3) a maximum of 50% squeezing can be asymptotically approached in the small laser intensity limit. As a by-product we also study the ordinary two-photon laser and find, e.g., photon-number variance and laser linewidth.
A quantum theory of two-photon correlated-spontaneous-emission lasers (CEL's) is developed, starting from the exact atom-field interaction Hamiltonian for cascade three-level atoms interacting with a single-mode radiation field. We consider the situation where the active atoms are prepared initially in a coherent superposition of three atomic levels and derive a master equation for the field-density operator by using a quantum theory for coherently pumped lasers. The master equation is transformed into a Fokker-Planck equation for the antinormal-ordering Q function. The drift coefficients of the Fokker-Planck equation enable us to study the steady-state operation of the two-photon CEL's analytically. We have studied both resonant two-photon CEL for which there is no threshold, and off-resonant two-photon CEL for which there exists a threshold. In both cases the initial atomic coherences provide phase locking, and squeezing in the phase quadrature of the field is found. The off-resonant two-photon CEL can build up from a vacuum when its linear gain is larger than the cavity loss (even without population inversion). Maximum squeezing is found in the no-population-inversion region with the laser intensities far below saturation in both cases, which are more than 90% for the resonant two-photon CEL and nearly 50% for the off-resonant one. Approximate steady-state Q functions are obtained for the resonant two-photon CEL and, in certain circumstances, for the off-resonant one.
The authors present a quantum analysis of four-wave mixing in a non-resonant nonlinear medium inside a cavity which is driven by two driving fields. In this process a nonlinear medium couples two pump modes with a signal mode of the frequency equal to the half-sum of the two pump field frequencies. Three types of stable steady-state solutions of the deterministic problem, describing three regimes of oscillation, are found: one below threshold and two different above-threshold regimes. The spectra of fluctuations of the quadrature-phase amplitudes for all three modes are calculated. It is found that in the above-threshold regime each of three modes may display a squeezed noise reduction. Below threshold a squeezing is realized for the central mode.