QUANTUM OPTICAL MASTER-EQUATIONS - THE ONE-ATOM LASER

We present a detailed numerical study of the one-atom laser, that is, a single two-level atom interacting with one lasing mode, whereby both the atom and the photon field are coupled to reservoirs. The stationa ry as well as the dynamical properties of the model are calculated dir ectly from the quantum master equation with the help of two numerical methods. These numerical methods do not need any quasi-probability rep resentation and they do not require approximations. We find that the o ne-atom laser exhibits most of the typical features of a normal laser. In the region far below threshold some aspects, among them the linewi dth, are changed due to eigenvalues of the master equation with imagin ary parts. In this regime the complexity of the eigenvalues prominentl y enters the dynamical behavior.