Cavity Lases When Occupied, on Average, by Less Than One Atom
FEB 01, 1995
DOI: 10.1063/1.2807905
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.
© 1995. American Institute of Physics
