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Cavity Lases When Occupied, on Average, by Less Than One Atom

FEB 01, 1995

A conventional laser cavity contains many excited atoms, each contributing to the radiation field through stimulated emission. Stripped to its bare essentials a laser would be a single atom interacting with a single mode of the electromagnetic field. A group at MIT recently built a laser that was very close to this minimal configuration.

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Volume 48, Number 2

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