Quantum dynamics of a driven three-level Josephson-atom maser

Recently, a lasing effect has been observed in a superconducting nanocircuit where a Cooper-pair box, acting as an artificial three-level atom, was coupled to a resonator [O. Astafiev, K. Inomata, A. O. Niskanen, T. Yamamoto, Yu. A. Pashkin, Y. Nakamura, and J. S. Tsai, Nature (London) 449, 588 (2007)]. Motivated by this experiment, we analyze the quantum dynamics of a three-level atom coupled to a quantum-mechanical resonator in the presence of a driving on the cavity within the framework of the Lindblad master equation. As a result, we have access to the dynamics of the atomic level populations and the photon number in the cavity as well as to the output spectrum. The results of our quantum approach agree with the experimental findings. The presence of a fluctuator in the circuit is also analyzed. Finally, we compare our results with those obtained within a semiclassical approximation.