Abstract

The process of stimulated emission from two nearby microlasers excited in an active microscopic cavity has been adopted to investigate the onset of the Bose-Einstein correlation established over very short distances d of order λ from the fluorescence source of stimulated radiation.^1,2 A marked effect of photon localization, which is unexpected according to standard QED, has been experimentally found. The effect is relevant for distances of the order bλ, for b ranging between 10 and 100, for a microcavity spacing equal to λ/2, i.e., in the cavity single resonant mode condition.² The effect tends to disappear for macroscopic cavity spacings, reproducing in this case the expected QED behavior, i.e., the one which is well known in standard laser physics. The dependence of the effect on the microcavity finesse and on the mirror reflectivities has been investigated.

© 1989 Optical Society of America