Correlated atomic excitation in multilevel lasers

Hans-Juergen Briegel; Georg M. Meyer; Berthold-Georg Englert

doi:10.1117/12.239183

29 April 1996 Correlated atomic excitation in multilevel lasers

Hans-Juergen Briegel, Georg M. Meyer, Berthold-Georg Englert

Proceedings Volume 2792, Laser Optics '95: Nonlinear Dynamics in Lasers; (1996) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.239183
Event: Laser Optics '95, 1995, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

Abstract

In a multi-level laser the pump process usually involves several intermediate levels as well as spontaneous relaxations and an external pump field. These details of the atomic excitation are often irrelevant and can be summarized by an effective heat-bath description and a two-level- laser model instead. Under certain circumstances, however, the heat-bath approximation will be too crude and it cannot account for phenomena such as intensity-noise squeezing and sub- Poissonian field statistics. We show how in the general situation the multi-level description can still be reduced to a two-level description in terms of a non-Markovian master equation. In steady state the atomic excitation is then described by a rate matrix rather than a single rate. The matrix or operator nature of the pump process gives rise to a correlation of the excitation rates with the statistical moments of the laser field. This correlation represents a correction to the standard laser model. In particular, it can be identified as the physical origin of the phenomenon of dynamic noise reduction in multi-level lasers.

Citation Download Citation

Hans-Juergen Briegel, Georg M. Meyer, and Berthold-Georg Englert "Correlated atomic excitation in multilevel lasers", Proc. SPIE 2792, Laser Optics '95: Nonlinear Dynamics in Lasers, (29 April 1996); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.239183

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