Abstract

The combined availability and refined control of beams of atoms excited to Rydberg levels and very-high-Q microwave cavities has allowed major advances in the understanding of the basic processes in radiation-matter interaction, leading to the operation of micromasers and to the development of cavity quantum electrodynamics.^[1,2] Here we discuss the dynamics of a novel class of systems, in which a beam of “two-level” Rydberg atoms is injected in a microwave cavity, as in the micromaser,^[1,3] but the average number N of atoms in the cavity is in the range 10 ~ 1000, that is intermediate between the micormaser (N ≤ 1) and the standard systems (N ≫ 10³). In the optical range, systems of this size have been investiated recently.^[4]

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