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Physical Review A

Quantum theory of the one-mode Λ-type micromaser and laser

Fam Le Kien, Georg M. Meyer, Marlan O. Scully, HERBERT WALTHER

Published Feb 1, 1995• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We derive the master equations for the fields in the one-mode \ensuremath{\Lambda}-type micromaser and laser with injected atoms in a superposition of their states. In terms of effective parameters, these equations are equivalent to those for a two-level micromaser and laser. The interference terms in the master equations may cancel the absorption terms independent of statistical properties of the field. Due to the atomic coherence between the two degenerate lower levels, the generation of field states with sub-Poissonian photon statistics is possible in the micromaser without the need for a population inversion. If an equivalent level system is used in a laser operating without population inversion it can produce field states with Poisson distributions of the photon number.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.51.1644

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We derive the master equations for the fields in the one-mode \ensuremath{\Lambda}-type micromaser and laser with injected atoms in a superposition of their states. In terms of effective parameters, these equations are equivalent to those for a two-level micromaser and laser. The interference terms in the master equations may cancel the absorption terms independent of statistical properties of the field. Due to the atomic coherence between the two degenerate lower levels, the generation of field states with sub-Poissonian photon statistics is possible in the micromaser without the need for a population inversion. If an equivalent level system is used in a laser operating without population inversion it can produce field states with Poisson distributions of the photon number.
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Quantum interference effects are theoretically investigated in the steady-state photon statistics of single-mode Λ- and V-type micromasers with injected three-level atoms in a superposition of their internal states. The two lower (upper) levels are nondegenerate and coherent in a general case. For the Λ-type case, we have discussed how detunings affect the photon statistics of the noninversion micromaser. Under the proper conditions strongly sub-Poissonian field states with a large number of photons can be easily produced in this novel micromaser even if there exists no coherence between the two lower levels. For the V-type case, we have analysed how the photon statistics changes with the increase of the ground-state population. Although the generation of the strongly sub-Poissonian states is always possible in the micromaser under the noninversion case, their photon intensities become very weak compared to the Λ-type case. Our results indicate that it is perfectly possible to experimentally realize a noninversion micromaser with strongly sub-Poissonian statistics in the Λ-type system.
A quantum theory of a \ensuremath{\Lambda}-type three-level single-mode quantum-beat laser with injected atomic coherences and with an external microwave field, which coherently drives the lower two nearly degenerate levels, is studied. A master equation for the field-density operator and the photon statistics is derived. The laser operation is analyzed in terms of the coefficients of the Fokker-Planck equation of the laser field. Noninversion lasing is found in both cases: without and with injected atomic coherences. At the same time, in the latter case large quantum-noise reduction is found, and for particular initial parameter choices the laser field is very near to a coherent state with exactly Poissonian photon-number distribution and near-Poissonian phase distribution.
We discuss a generalized version of the Scully-Lamb laser master equation for a collection of driven multilevel atoms in a lambda-type configuration. We are especially interested in the effect of the external driving field on the laser process with or without a population inversion between the lasing levels. We provide an exact solution of the photon probability distribution in steady state and discuss regimes of operation that can lead to sub-Poissonian statistics, as measured by the ratio between the variance and the average photon number. We solve the field master equation in the transient regime and analyze the effects of the external driving field on the linewidth of the emitted radiation. The largest reduction of the photon variance relative to the mean number corresponds to the injection into the cavity of atoms prepared in the nonlasing level. Injection of atoms in an incoherent mixture of the three energy states normally leads to super-Poissonian statistics.
We present the quantum theory of the two-mode micromaser operating on \ensuremath{\Lambda}-type three-level atoms. The explicit expression of the detailed-balance steady-state photon distribution is derived. The photon statistics and the correlation between the modes are studied. It is shown that due to the strong anticorrelation between the modes the fluctuations in the total number of photons may be sub-Poissonian even when the fluctuations in the number of photons in each mode are super-Poissonian.
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