Abstract

Master equation methods provide useful tools for analyzing the statistics of quantum optical systems. They focus attention on a simple system of interest (a single cavity mode, for example), accounting for its interaction with its environment in parameters describing decay rates and environmental fluctuations. Intracavity systems for generating squeezed light are prime candidates for analysis by these methods. It has been shown, however, that it is important in such analysis to distinguish between the statistics of the intracavity field and the statistics of the field generated outside the cavity by transmission through the cavity mirrors.^1,2 It is desirable to perform calculations with the single mode inside the cavity. Then the statistics of the multimode field outside the cavity must be related to those of the internal mode. The situation is analogous to that in resonance fluorescence, where the statistics of the fluorescent field can be calculated in terms of the source dipole operator. In this paper the field outside an optical cavity is expressed in terms of the intracavity oscillator as a source. The measurement of squeezing in the external field is then related to the correlation properties of the cavity source operator. Measurement by photon counting of homodyned light is related to the spectrum of squeezing calculated by Walls and co-workers.

© 1986 Optical Society of America