Thresholdless dressed-atom laser in a photonic band-gap material

Journal Article · Fri May 15 04:00:00 EDT 2009 · Physical Review. A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVA.79.053847· OSTI ID:21313123

Gaoxiang, Li; Min, Luo ^[1]; Ficek, Zbigniew ^[2]

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1. Department of Physics, Huazhong Normal University, Wuhan 430079 (China)
2. Department of Physics, School of Physical Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072 (Australia)

We demonstrate the capability of complete thresholdless lasing operation between dressed states of a two-level atom located inside a microscopic cavity engineered in a photonic band-gap material. We distinguish between threshold and thresholdless behaviors by analyzing Mandel's Q parameter for the cavity field. We find that the threshold behavior depends on whether the spontaneous emission is or is not present on the lasing transition. In the presence of the spontaneous emission, the mean photon number of the cavity field exhibits threshold behavior, indicating that the system may operate as an ordinary laser. When the spontaneous emission is eliminated on the lasing transition, no threshold is observed for all values of the pumping rate, indicating the system becomes a thresholdless laser. Moreover, we find that, under a thresholdless operation, the mean photon number can increase nonlinearly with the pumping rate, and this process is accompanied by a sub-Poissonian statistics of the field. This suggests that the nonclassical statistics can be used to distinguish a nonlinear operation of the dressed-atom laser.

• OSTI ID: 21313123
• Journal Information: Physical Review. A, Journal Name: Physical Review. A Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 79; ISSN 1050-2947; ISSN PLRAAN
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
ATOMS
DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS
EMISSION
LASERS
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
OPTICAL PUMPING
PHOTONS
STATISTICS