Rate equation theory of sub-Poissonian laser light
| dc.creator | Arnaud, Jacques | |
| dc.date | 2002-01-31 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T06:03:37Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T06:03:37Z | |
| dc.description | Lasers essentially consist of single-mode optical cavities containing two-level atoms with a supply of energy called the pump and a sink of energy, perhaps an optical detector. The latter converts the light energy into a sequence of electrical pulses corresponding to photo-detection events. It was predicted in 1984 on the basis of Quantum Optics and verified experimentally shortly thereafter that when the pump is non-fluctuating the emitted light does not fluctuate much. Precisely, this means that the variance of the number of photo-detection events observed over a sufficiently long period of time is much smaller than the average number of events. Light having that property is said to be ``sub-Poissonian''. The theory presented rests on the concept introduced by Einstein around 1905, asserting that matter may exchange energy with a wave at angular frequency $ω$ only by multiples of $\hbarω$. The optical field energy may only vary by integral multiples of $\hbarω$ as a result of matter quantization and conservation of energy. A number of important results relating to isolated optical cavities containing two-level atoms are first established on the basis of the laws of Statistical Mechanics. Next, the laser system with a pump and an absorber of radiation is treated. The expression of the photo-current spectral density found in that manner coincides with the Quantum Optics result. The concepts employed in this paper are intuitive and the algebra is elementary. The paper supplements a previous OQE tutorial paper in establishing a connection between the theory of laser noise and Statistical Mechanics. | |
| dc.description | 19 pages, 2 figures, LaTeX with kluwer class, to be published in Optical and Quantum Electronics | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0201151 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0201151 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/90007 | |
| dc.subject | Quantum Physics | |
| dc.title | Rate equation theory of sub-Poissonian laser light | |
| dc.type | text |