Effects of coupled bichromatic atom-cavity interaction in the cavity-QED microlaser

In the observation of multiple thresholds in the cavity-quantum electrodynamics microlaser there was deviation from the result predicted by uniform atom-cavity coupling theory, notably a frequency-pushing behavior. We analyze in the semiclassical limit the tilted injection of atoms, originally used to achieve a spatially uniform atom-cavity coupling, and show that the deviation originates from the interference between the induced dipole moments associated with two traveling-wave components of a standing-wave cavity mode. The criteria for sufficiently reduced interference and thus uniform atom-cavity interactions are derived in analytic considerations and verified by numerical calculation. Our analysis is well supported by experimental data.National Research Laboratory, KR