Abstract

The intrinsic quantum nature of the micromaser allowed for the prediction and the observation of peculiar quantum effects in the statistical properties of radiation, such as sub-Poissonian photonstatistics and Cummings revivals We consider another prediction on micromaser dynamics, which has not been observed so far: the existence of the so-called trapping states (TS) in the stationary photon distribution of the cavity mode [1]. The trapping effect consists in a truncation of the mode photon distribution at particular values of the photon number, which correspond to atoms executing an integer number of Rabi oscillations during the passage through the cavity. In this case the Jaynes-Cummings interaction does not change neither the atomic state, nor the number of cavity photons. Hence the next injected atoms always find the same number of photons and repeat the same time evolution, so that the photon distribution vanishes past the trapping value of the photon number.

© 1998 IEEE