Quantum optical master equations: The one-atom laser

Abstract
We present a detailed numerical study of the one-atom laser, that is, a single two-level atom interacting with one lasing mode, whereby both the atom and the photon field are coupled to reservoirs. The stationary as well as the dynamical properties of the model are calculated directly from the quantum master equation with the help of two numerical methods. These numerical methods do not need any quasi-probability representation and they do not require approximations. We find that the one-atom laser exhibits most of the typical features of a normal laser. In the region far below threshold some aspects, among them the linewidth, are changed due to eigenvalues of the master equation with imaginary parts. In this regime the complexity of the eigenvalues prominently enters the dynamical behavior.

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