Polarization properties of a one-atom maser under a step-wise two-photon pump

The theory of a one-atom maser, when the atoms enter the microresonator being excited to the upper maser level from its ground state by the bichromatic laser field resonant with the two adjacent optically allowed transitions with arbitrary angular momenta, is built. This theory is applied to the investigation of the polarization properties of a one-atom maser, i.e., the dependence of the maser field characteristics on the mutual orientations of the polarization vectors of the maser field mode and of the pump laser field. New experiments are proposed to study such polarization properties, which may be performed within the framework of the experimental setup used by Professor H. Walther and collaborators [1-3].