Abstract

Squeezed state generation for a system of two-level atoms interacting with the field of a high-finesse cavity has been extensively discussed both experimentally and theoretically in recent years. Most theories describing these systems take the cavity field as a plane traveling wave for simplicity. With this assumption it is quite difficult to make quantitative comparisons between theory and recent experiments. However, by employing the formalism developed in Ref. 1, we are able to treat rather general spatial variations of the intracavity field subject to the constraint of the good-cavity limit of optical bistability. Squeezed state generation for the three particular examples of a plane-wave ring interferometer, a Gaussian-mode ring cavity, and a plane-wave field in a standing-wave interferometer are considered to illustrate the formalism. Somewhat surprisingly, in regimes for which the plane-wave theory predicts 50-70% squeezing (cooperatively C ~10²–10³), the standing-wave structure produces only modest reductions in the squeezing (a few percent), while the radial variations of the field reduce the squeezing by ~10%.

© 1987 Optical Society of America