We calculate intracavity photon-number and extracavity photocount distributions for a pump-noise-suppressed laser, using both the Lamb-Scully laser model in the number-state representation and the Haken-Risken laser model in the coherent representation. When pump fluctuations and spontaneous decay are suppressed, a pump-noise-suppressed laser has intracavity photon-number fluctuations squeezed by a factor up to 1/2. The extracavity photocount fluctuations are at the Poisson level for counting times much shorter than the cavity lifetime, whereas the variance for photocounts can be reduced to the mean of the intracavity photon number, which is markedly sub-Poissonian, under ideal conditions when the counting time is much longer than the cavity lifetime.

• Received 1 March 1993

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.48.3930