Nonlinear dynamics of a passive, coherently driven mesoscopic micromaser

A mesoscopic beam of two-level Rydberg atoms, prepared in the lower state, interacts with a coherently driven cavity mode. The dynamics is described by Maxwell-Bloch equations with atomic propagation. On resonance, the system was predicted to exhibit multistability, upper-branch instabilities, and self-pulsing. In the presence of atomic detuning its dynamical behavior is shown to include in addition period doubling, frequency locking, quasiperiodicity, and chaos, thus providing a remarkable example of nonlinear dynamics of a passive autonomous atomic system with propagation.