Abstract
The basic model considered in this paper is a single atom inside an optical cavity. We consider both three- and four-level atomic systems and use incoherent pumping for both. We present numerical results for the intracavity photon number, the laser linewidth, and the second-order intensity correlation function g(2)(τ). These results are obtained by using the quantum-trajectory method with the formalism of Carmichael.1 Previous work has shown that a single-atom laser is tenable if the atom-field coupling strength g is large enough.2 The work of Savage and Mu dealt with the case of large pumping rates and was concerned with the generation of antibunched, or amplitude-squeezed, light. Here, we examine the behavior of such a device as β, the fraction of spontaneous emission into the laser cavity, is altered. It has been proposed that as β approaches unity, a thresholdless laser results.3 Recently, a birth-death model for such a system was constructed; it reproduces the rate equations for the mean photon number and excited state population, provided that a factorization ansatz, was made.4 The photon statistics calculated from this birth-death process indicated that the thresholdless laser can indeed be quite noisy and that the concept of a laser threshold for such a device is ill founded.
© 1994 Optical Society of America
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