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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2009
ABSTRACT. In this paper experiments performed with the one-atom maser are reviewed. Furthermore, possible experiments to test basic quantum physics are discussed.
Introduction, the One-Atom-Maser
The most promising avenue to study the generation process of radiation in lasers and masers is to drive a maser consisting of a single mode cavity by single atoms. This system, at first glance, seems to be another example of a Gedanken-experiment treated in the pioneering work of Jaynes and Cummings (1963), but such a one-atom maser (Meschede, Walther and Müller, 1985) really exists and can in addition be used to study the basic principles of radiation-atom interaction. The advantages of the system are:
it is the first maser which sustains oscillations with less than one atom on the average in the cavity,
this setup allows to study in detail the conditions necessary to obtain nonclassical radiation, especially radiation with sub-Poissonian photon statistics in a maser system directly in a Poissonian pumping process, and
it is possible to study a variety of phenomena of a quantum field including the quantum measurement process.
What are the tools that make this device work: It was the enormous progress in constructing superconducting cavities together with the laser preparation of highly excited atoms – Rydberg atoms – that have made the realization of such a one-atom maser possible.
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