We report experimental realization of a rudimentary atomic \ifmmode \check{S}\else \v{S}\fi{}olc filter, recently proposed by Hong et al. [Opt. Express 17, 15455 (2009)]. It is realized by employing a bipolar atom-cavity coupling constant in the cavity-QED microlaser operating with a TEM
10 mode in a strong coupling regime. The polarity flip in the coupling constant dramatically changes the photoemission probability of a two-level atom relative to unipolar coupling, resulting in multiple narrow emission bands in the detuning curve of the microlaser mean photon number. The observed resonance curves are explained well by a two-step, three-dimensional, geodesic-like motion of the Bloch vector in the semiclassical limit.
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.