A laser with squeezed-pump fluctuations is found to oscillate with one of two macroscopically distinct phases. The phase diffusion rate is reduced below that of the usual laser and the output light may have amplitude fluctuations reduced below the vacuum level.
Current laser systems have phase and amplitude fluctuations which are partially quantum in origin. The amplitude fluctuations of a highly stabilized laser are shot noise limited, that is they have quantum fluctuations due to the Poissonian fluctuations of photons in a coherent state. These photon number fluctuations have been shown to have an origin in the incoherent pumping mechanism used for standard lasers. It has recently been demonstrated experimentally that by suppressing the amplitude fluctuations of the pump a laser output with reduced amplitude fluctuations is possible. The phase fluctuations in a laser are due to phase diffusion and are substantially above the quantum limit. Techniques to reduce the laser phase fluctuations have been proposed making use of correlated spontaneous emission.
This paper clarifies the origins of the standard quantum limit for the amplitude noise of a laser-oscillator outgoing field. The amplitude noise within the cavity bandwidth, \ensuremath{\Omega}\ensuremath{\le}\ensuremath{\omega}/Q, is ultimately caused by the pump amplitude fluctuation, while that above the cavity bandwidth, \ensuremath{\Omega}\ensuremath{\ge}\ensuremath{\omega}/Q, is due to the field zero-point fluctuation. The uncertainty product of the amplitude- and phase-noise spectra at an extremely high pumping level is still larger than the Heisenberg minimum-uncertainty product because of the presence of nonstationary phase-diffusion noise. In this sense, an ordinary laser oscillator is not a quantum-limited device. This paper suggests that a laser oscillator can produce an amplitude-squeezed state in itself if the pump amplitude fluctuation is suppressed below the ordinary shot-noise level. The paper discusses possible schemes for suppressing pump fluctuation, commutator bracket preservation without pump fluctuation, and resulting amplitude and phase spectra. The similarity of and difference between a pump-noise-suppressed laser and a cavity degenerate parametric amplifier are delineated.
Intensity squeezed light was successfully generated using semiconductor lasers with sub-Poissonian pumping. Control of the pumping statistics is crucial and is achieved by a large series resistor which regulates the pump current; its sub-Poissonian statistics are then transferred to the laser output. The sub-Poissonian pumping of other laser systems is not so simple, however, and their potential as squeezed states sources is apparently diminished. We consider a conventional laser incoherently pumped well above threshold, and allow for pump depletion of the ground state. In this regime, sub-Poissonian photon statistics and squeezed amplitude fluctuations are produced.
We investigate the effect of injected squeezed vacuum on the phase and intensity fluctuations of a laser. By using a stochastic simulation of the Langevin equations, we find that the phase diffusion noise of a laser with injected squeezed vacuum can be transiently reduced by a factor of 2, in agreement, with earlier predictions. Further, we find that the laser linewidth is broadened. The key observation is that the phase-diffusion rate is time dependent. We find that the steady-state intensity fluctuations are increased by the injected squeezing, in qualitative (but not quantitative) agreement with an earlier prediction. The problem of locking is examined. We find that the injected squeezed vacuum does not cause the laser to lock to any particular phase. We present an approximate solution of the Fokker-Planck equation in steady state, and a simple geometrical, vector kick model from which most of our results can be obtained.