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Phys. Rev. A 69, 023812 (2004) [9 pages]

Solvable model of a strongly driven micromaser

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P. Lougovski1, F. Casagrande2, A. Lulli2, B.-G. Englert3,1, E. Solano1,4, and H. Walther1
1Max-Planck Institut für Quantenoptik and Hans-Kopfermann Strasse 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
2INFM - Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Milano, Via Celoria 16, 20133 Milano, Italy
3Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117 542, Singapore
4Sección Física, Departamento de Ciencias, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Apartado 1761 Lima, Peru

Received 3 September 2003; published 26 February 2004

We study the dynamics of a micromaser where the pumping atoms are strongly driven by a resonant classical field during their transit through the cavity mode. We derive a master equation for this strongly driven micromaser, involving the contributions of the unitary atom-field interactions and the dissipative effects of a thermal bath. We find analytical solutions for the temporal evolution and the steady state of this system by means of phase-space techniques, providing an unusual solvable model of an open quantum system, including pumping and decoherence. We derive closed expressions for all relevant expectation values, describing the statistics of the cavity field and the detected atomic levels. The transient regime shows the buildup of mixtures of mesoscopic fields evolving towards a super-Poissonian steady-state field that, nevertheless, yields atomic correlations that exhibit stronger nonclassical features than the conventional micromaser.

© 2004 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.69.023812
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.69.023812
PACS:
42.50.Pq, 03.65.Yz, 32.80.Qk