Output Spectrum of Single-Atom Lasers

Abstract

We consider a laser composed of a single atom in a microcavity, with a coherent or incoherent pump. We consider both three- and four-level gain schemes, and examine the output spectrum of such lasers. We find that the linewidth generally scales as the inverse of the photon number. For large atom-field coupling, a vacuum-Rabi doublet structure is obtained. In the three-level case, this vacuum-Rabi splitting is apparent only for small intracavity photon numbers, and vanishes for large pumps. In the four-level scheme, the vacuum-Rabi structure appears at a nonzero pump level, and is maintained for large pumps, even when the intracavity photon number is larger than unity. This behavior is explained utilizing the quantum trajectory approach.