THEORETICAL-ANALYSIS OF THE POWER AND LINEWIDTH OF THE DIODE-LASER-PUMPED RB-87 MASER

We calculated the oscillation power and total linewidth of the diode-l aser-pumped Rb-87 maser with spatial variations of the pumping rate an d the radiative microwave field in the resonance cell. It is found tha t the maximum oscillation power P(max) corresponding to the optimum pu mping rate GAMMA(opt) does not increase monotonically with the atomic density no and that the short-term frequency stability of the maser co rresponding to P(max) is about a factor of three better than that curr ently obtained with a lamp-pumped Rb-87 maser. Some results are in fai r agreement with our previous experiments. We also examined the variat ion of the oscillation powers vs light intensity in an average mode fo r three laser-pumping schemes with different frequencies and polarizat ions of the diode lasers.