Abstract

It is well known that in the limit of very low temperature (no thermal photons) the steady state photon statistics of a micromaser is given by where Ω is the single-photon Rabi frequency and tint (same for all atoms) is the transit time of an atom through the cavity. If the interaction time tint fulfills the relation the photon distribution is truncated at the so-called trapping state | n >. As a result, for example, sharp dips show up in the steady state mean photon number.^[1] However, taking into account both a finite number of thermal photons and a spread of the interaction times, the micromaser may jump past the trapping states. Thus, the effect of the trapping states is rapidly washed out.

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