Thermal, quantum anti-bunching and lasing thresholds from single emitters to macroscopic devices

TL;DR

This paper provides an analytical framework for understanding how the emission properties of an ensemble of emitters coupled to an optical cavity transition from thermal to anti-bunched to lasing regimes, depending on the number of emitters and system parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a fully analytical model that explicitly relates the number of emitters to different emission regimes, revealing a universal transition sequence and conditions for laser threshold.

Findings

Identifies critical number of emitters for lasing transition.

Demonstrates regimes of thermal, anti-bunching, and lasing emission.

Shows limitations of second order intensity correlation in predicting lasing.

Abstract

Starting from a fully quantized Hamiltonian for an ensemble of identical emitters coupled to the modes of an optical cavity, we determine analytically regimes of thermal, collective anti-bunching and laser emission that depend explicitly on the number of emitters. The lasing regime is reached for a number of emitters above a critical number (which depends on the light-matter coupling, detuning and the dissipation rates) via a universal transition from thermal emission to collective anti-bunching to lasing as the pump increases. Cases where the second order intensity correlation fails to predict laser action are also presented.