Effects of Dicke superradiance in context of the one-atom maser

J. Nonlinear Optics 24 (2000) 319 We consider a micromaser model to study the influence of Dicke superradiance in the context of the one-atom maser. The model involves a microwave cavity into which two-level Rydberg atoms are pumped in pairs. We consider a random pump mechanism which allows the presence of at most one pair of atoms in the cavity at any time. We analyze the differences between the present system, called the Dicke micromaser, and an equivalently pumped conventional one-atom micromaser. These differences are attributed to the Dicke cooperativity in the two-atom system. We also show that the two-atom Dicke micromaser is equivalent to a one-atom cascade two-photon micromaser. With the introduction of a one-photon detuning, the present theory further describes a true two-photon micromaser. We discuss in detail the role of one-photon detuning in the mechanism of a one-atom two-photon micromaser. This leads us to point out that the two-atom cavity dynamics can be verified by a proper scaling of the results from an equivalent one-atom two-photon micromaser.