Abstract

Among the novel sources of nonclassical light that have recently been studied are a number of novel lasers. Conventional laser theory describes a classical stochastic field. I show that with a change in the standard operating conditions the conventional laser model produces nonclassical fields. Deviations from the classical description in standard laser theory are small by some inverse power of the threshold photon number. Operating conditions are designed to make stimulated emission dominant; thus laser cavities are good cavities that store photons and give a high threshold photon number. Low threshold photon numbers are achieved in bad cavities and most readily in a single-atom bad-cavity system. Such a system trades phase coherence for reduced intensity noise.

© 1988 Optical Society of America