Theory of a Laser with an Inhomogeneously Broadened Saturable Absorber*

Many quantum optical systems exhibit first-order phase transition analogy.1 Fluctuations of the optical field in such systems are due to spontaneous emission noise. The nature of these fluctuations for various systems has been discussed using various approaches. Fully quantum mechanical and Langevin equation treatments have been given for the dye laser2,3 and the laser with a saturable absorber (LSA) with homogeneously broadened media.2,4 For inhomogeneously broadened media, such treatments are either valid for low intensities or do not fully take into account the effect of quantum noise.5 In this contribution we present a fully quantum mechanical treatment for the LSA with an inhomogeneously broadened absorber using the Foch state representation of the density matrix.2,6