Semi-classical theory of quiet lasers. I: Principles

When light originating from a laser diode driven by non-fluctuating electrical currents is incident on a photo-detector, the photo-current does not fluctuate much. Precisely, this means that the variance of the number of photo-electrons counted over a large time interval is much smaller that the average number of photo-electrons. At non-zero Fourier frequency $\Omega$ the photo-current power spectrum is of the form $\Omega^2/(1+\Omega^2)$ and thus vanishes as $\Omega\to 0$, a conclusion equivalent to the one given above. The purpose of this paper is to show that results such as the one just cited may be derived from a (semi-classical) theory in which neither the optical field nor the electron wave-function are quantized. We first observe that almost any medium may be described by a circuit and distinguish (possibly non-linear) conservative elements such as pure capacitances, and conductances that represent the atom-field coupling. The theory rests on the non-relativistic approximation. Nyquist noise sources (in which the Planck term $\hbar\omega/2$ is being restored) are associated with positive or negative conductances, and the law of average-energy conservation is enforced. We consider mainly second-order correlations in stationary linearized regimes.