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arXiv:quant-ph/0309199 · Frontiers in Optics

A one-atom laser in a regime of strong coupling

Jason McKeever, Andreea Boca, A. David. Boozer, J. R. Buck, H. Jeff. Kimble

Published Jan 1, 2003• 2 citations
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Abstract

Although conventional lasers operate with a large number of intracavity atoms, the lasing properties of a single atom in a resonant cavity have been theoretically investigated for more than a decade. Here we report the experimental realization of such a one-atom laser operated in a regime of strong coupling. Our experiment exploits recent advances in cavity quantum electrodynamics that allow one atom to be isolated in an optical cavity in a regime for which one photon is sufficient to saturate the atomic transition. In this regime the observed characteristics of the atom-cavity system are qualitatively different from those of the familiar many atom case. Specifically, we present measurements of intracavity photon number versus pump intensity that exhibit "thresholdless" behavior, and infer that the output flux from the cavity mode exceeds that from atomic fluorescence by more than tenfold. Observations of the second-order intensity correlation function demonstrate that our one-atom laser generates manifestly nonclassical light that exhibits both photon antibunching and sub-Poissonian photon statistics.

DOI
10.1364/fio.2003.pdp5

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Although conventional lasers operate with a large number of intracavity atoms, the lasing properties of a single atom in a resonant cavity have been theoretically investigated for more than a decade. Here we report the experimental realization of such a one-atom laser operated in a regime of strong coupling. Our experiment exploits recent advances in cavity quantum electrodynamics that allow one atom to be isolated in an optical cavity in a regime for which one photon is sufficient to saturate the atomic transition. In this regime the observed characteristics of the atom-cavity system are qualitatively different from those of the familiar many atom case. Specifically, we present measurements of intracavity photon number versus pump intensity that exhibit "thresholdless" behavior, and infer that the output flux from the cavity mode exceeds that from atomic fluorescence by more than tenfold. Observations of the second-order intensity correlation function demonstrate that our one-atom laser generates manifestly nonclassical light that exhibits both photon antibunching and sub-Poissonian photon statistics.
The radiative properties of atoms inside an optical cavity can be dramatically changed with respect to those in free space. In the strong-coupling limit, the reversible dipole interaction between an atom and the cavity field dominates the irreversible decay resulting from spontaneous emission and cavity damping. In this limit the atom and field can no longer be regarded as separate quantities but instead form a composite dynamic system. To enhance the dipole coupling constant and increase the photon storage time, our experiments are performed with a small cavity 1 mm long, with a finesse of 8 × 104. On average, 0.4 photons are sufficient to saturate the resonance transition at 852 nm for the cesium atoms used, while the cooperativity parameter for a single atom is 2. Optical bistability is studied in this system over the range 3 < N < 65 atoms inside the cavity, with the semiclassical theory predicting bistability for N > 5. We report observations of manifestly quantum effects in this regime, including photon antibunching and sub-Poissonian photon statistics, with the magnitude of these nonclassical effects observed to be largely independent of the number of intracavity atoms.
Our recent paper reports the experimental realization of a one-atom laser in a regime of strong coupling [J. McKeever, A. Boca, A. D. Boozer, J. R. Buck, and H. J. Kimble, Nature (London) 425, 268 (2003)]. Here we provide the supporting theoretical analysis relevant to the operating regime of our experiment. By way of a simplified four-state model, we investigate the passage from the domain of conventional laser theory into the regime of strong coupling for a single intracavity atom pumped by coherent external fields. The four-state model is also employed to exhibit the vacuum-Rabi splitting and to calculate the optical spectrum. We next extend this model to incorporate the relevant Zeeman hyperfine states as well as a simple description of the pumping processes in the presence of polarization gradients and atomic motion. This extended model is employed to make quantitative comparisons with our earlier measurements for the intracavity photon number versus pump strength and for the photon statistics as expressed by the intensity correlation function ${g}^{(2)}(\ensuremath{\tau})$.
We investigate the transient and the steady-state behaviour of the photon statistics of a single-atom laser, consisting of a three-level Λ system, driven by an incoherent external pump field and strongly coupled to a single mode of an optical cavity. For several limiting cases we are able to obtain analytical results. A comparison with standard multi-atom laser theory reveals a surprisingly good agreement down to very small intracavity photon numbers. Under appropriate operating conditions a calculation of the second-order intensity correlation function yields sub-Poissonian statistics as well as strong antibunching induced by the nonlinear dynamics of the atom.
We investigate the effects of sub-Poissonian photon statistics and photon antibunching in the light generation by a photonic-crystal one-atom laser. The physical system consists of a two-level light emitter strongly coupled to a high-quality microcavity engineered within a photonic crystal and coherently driven by a strong external laser field. This study reveals that the electromagnetic environment provided by the photonic crystal facilitates light generation characterized by pronounced sub-Poissonian photon statistics and photon antibunching, and strongly enhanced relative to that from a one-atom laser in a conventional optical cavity. The characteristics of the cavity photon statistics are fundamentally distinct from those of a corresponding microcavity in ordinary vacuum. For large discontinuities in the photon density of states between Mollow spectral components of atomic resonance fluorescence, in the good cavity regime, the photon statistics is sub-Poissonian, in contrast to the case of a conventional cavity where sub-Poissonian photon statistics is present only for a bad cavity. These results suggest the possibility of using a photonic-crystal one-atom laser as an efficient source of nonclassical light.
A tutorial review is given on recent experiments performed with 1 ⩽ N ⩽ 110 atoms in a microscopic high-finesse optical cavity. The resonator has length 1 mm and finesse 80 000. The radiative properties of the strongly coupled atom-cavity system differ from those of the individual components. For example, spontaneous emission is reversible, the first excited state of the composite system splits into two levels and the intensity fluctuations of the light transmitted by the resonator are nonclassical. We observe photon-antibunching and sub-Poissonian photon statistics. In terms of practical applications, the system renders possible ( i ) the detection of single atoms with high sensitivity and ( ii ) optical bistability for a few atoms and photons only.
We study atomic center of mass motion and field dynamics of a single-atom laser consisting of a single incoherently pumped free atom moving in an optical high-Q resonator. For sufficient pumping, the system starts lasing whenever the atom is close to a field antinode. If the field mode eigenfrequency is larger than the atomic transition frequency, the generated laser light attracts the atom to the field antinode and cools its motion. Using quantum Monte Carlo wave function simulations, we investigate this coupled atom-field dynamics including photon recoil and cavity decay. In the regime of strong coupling, the generated field shows strong nonclassical features such as photon antibunching, and the atom is spatially confined and cooled to sub-Doppler temperatures.