Abstract

We have studied the two-photon micro-maser by solving exactly the equation of motion for a single-mode field in a cavity coupled to a two-photon transition in a three-level cascade atomic system, where detuning of the intermediate level is arbitrary. We find that the dependence of the first two moments of the steady state photon number distribution on the interaction time is very similar to that obtained for an ordinary one-photon maser¹ for small values of the detuning, since in this limit one has two one-photon transitions rather than a true two-photon transition.

© 1990 Optical Society of America