Collectively pumped superradiant laser with coherence scaling beyond the standard quantum limit

Abstract

For more than half a century, the standard quantum limit (SQL) was thought to limit the laser coherence $\mathfrak{C}$ -- the number of photons emitted from the laser into the beam in one coherence time -- to a scaling $Θ(μ^2)$, where $μ$ is the mean number of optical-frequency excitations stored inside the laser. However, recently it has been shown [Baker et al., Nat. Phys. 17, 179 (2021)] that the Heisenberg limit -- an achievable ultimate limit set by quantum mechanics for the task of producing a beam with the standard properties of a laser beam -- is $\mathfrak{C}=Θ(μ^4)$, a quadratic enhancement. So far, proposals to demonstrate beyond-SQL scaling of $\mathfrak{C}$ have been limited to circuit QED, at microwave frequencies (i.e., a maser). Here, we introduce a class of generalized far-above-threshold (FAT) laser models, obtained by replacing the ordinary bosonic lowering operator $\hat{a}$ by a general lowering operator $\hat{L}$ in the superoperators appearing in the master equation that governs the FAT laser dynamics. We then show that an optical-frequency superradiant laser in the bad-cavity limit, with feedback-controlled collective pumping, realizes one such model, in which $\hat{L}$ is identified with the collective superradiant lowering operator $\hat{J}$. This model can surpass the SQL scaling, with the coherence exhibiting a scaling as large as $\mathfrak{C}= Θ(μ^{8/3})$ in the optimal parameter regime. Here, in the bad-cavity limit, $μ\approx N/2$, where $N$ is the number of superradiant atoms.