Abstract

We present a full quantum treatment of the nondegenerate optical parametric oscillator in the extreme quantum limit of small photon numbers and very large nonlinear coupling strength; by strong coupling we mean that the constant of the nonlinear process is comparable or even larger than the cavity decay rates, which is outside the range of presently available technology. In this regime the standard linearization procedure is ruled out, but on the other hand the fact that the photon numbers remain small makes direct numerical solution of the master equation feasible.

© 1996 IEEE