Photonic tunneling effect between two coupled single-atom laser cavities imbedded within a photonic-crystal platform

In this paper we investigate the photonic tunneling effect between two coupled one-atom laser cavities. The physical system consists of two coupled photonic crystal microcavities and each cavity contains a coherently pumped two-level atom. The dynamics of the system can be described by the master equation in terms of the reduced density operator. It is shown that the photonic tunneling behavior depends on certain physical conditions of the system. In the absence of the pumping field and without dissipations, the coherent photon number imbalance between two cavities exhibits the alternating-current Josephson effect. However, when the pumping effect and losses of the system are taken into account, the mean photon number imbalance displays a damped oscillation. In addition, the influence of tunneling amplitude and photonic band-gap structure on the oscillations is also studied. The research gives a further insight into the correlated dynamics of two coupled one-atom laser systems and provides an idea for constructing novel photon tunnel devises.