Abstract

At low temperatures steady-state macroscopic superpositions can be generated in the field of a micromaser pumped by a stream of two-level atoms injected in a coherent superposition of their upper and lower states. The onset of these superpositions resembles a second-order phase transition, with the control parameter being the ratio of the atomic injection rate to the cavity damping rate.

© 1990 Optical Society of America

Macroscopic quantum superpositions by means of single-atom dispersion

C. M. Savage, S. L. Braunstein, and D. F. Walls
Opt. Lett. 15(11) 628-630 (1990)

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Collapse and revival in the micromaser

E. M. Wright and P. Meystre
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Exact method for the simulation of micromaser dynamics. I. Poissonian pump mechanism

N. Nayak
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 13(10) 2099-2105 (1996)

Preparing Fock states in the micromaser

Simon Brattke, Ben T. H. Varcoe, and Herbert Walther
Opt. Express 8(2) 131-144 (2001)