Abstract

The laser is a nonlinear dissipative quantum system that operates far from thermal equilibrium. This is achieved by coupling the cavity field to two reservoirs: the ensemble of inverted atoms, which are responsible for the flux of energy into the system, and a dissipative reservoir, like the vacuum, that accounts for the losses. In the traditional laser case only the phase-independent correlations are finite and the entire process is rotationally invariant. However, by using coherently prepared atoms for the pump process or by a shining broadband squeezed vacuum into the laser resonator, the noise properties are modified in a subtle way. In the latter case the deterministic dynamics is unaffected, and only the noise is distributed unequally over the field quadratures.

© 1990 Optical Society of America