Detuning effects in the vertical cold-atom micromaser

TL;DR

This paper develops a quantum theory for the cold atom micromaser considering gravity and detuning effects, revealing high sensitivity to detuning sign and enabling photon emission by atoms that wouldn't reach the interaction region.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive quantum model including gravity and detuning effects, and presents a method to solve non-resonant atom-field interactions for arbitrary cavity modes.

Findings

Atoms can emit photons despite not reaching the interaction region due to detuning.

System exhibits extreme sensitivity to the sign of detuning.

A new solution method for non-resonant atom-field interactions is proposed.

Abstract

The quantum theory of the cold atom micromaser including the effects of gravity is established in the general case where the cavity mode and the atomic transition frequencies are detuned. We show that atoms which classically would not reach the interaction region are able to emit a photon inside the cavity. The system turns out to be extremely sensitive to the detuning and in particular to its sign. A method to solve the equations of motion for non resonant atom-field interaction and arbitrary cavity modes is presented.