Hannover 2003 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Downloads | Help
Q: Quantenoptik
Q 9: Quanteneffekte 1
Q 9.3: Talk
Monday, March 24, 2003, 14:30–14:45, F107
From antibunching to bunching in cavity QED — •M. Hennrich, A. Kuhn, and G. Rempe — Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Str. 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
The photon statistics of light reveals whether it originates from a classical thermal or coherent source or from a quantum source like a single atom. These sources can be distinguished by their intensity correlation function, g(2)(τ), which exhibits bunching for thermal light, is flat for coherent radiation, or shows antibunching for non-classical light. Here, we investigate the properties of light emitted from a fluctuating number of atoms coupled to a single mode of a high-finesse optical cavity and a continuous-wave pump laser [1]. The laser and the cavity mode together drive a Raman transition that generates photons in the cavity. At the same time, a second laser is applied to pump the atoms back to their initial state. With two detectors monitoring all photons emitted from the cavity, g(2)(τ) is measured [2]. We observe a transition from antibunching to bunching when increasing the number of atoms. We also discuss the effect of atom-number fluctuations [3] on the photon statistics.
[1] Hennrich et al. PRL 85, 4872 (2000); Kuhn et al. PRL 89, 67901 (2002)
[2] Hanbury Brown and Twiss Proc. Roy. Soc. A242, 300 (1957)
[3] Carmichael et al. J. Phys. A 11, L121 (1978)