This is the first of a series of papers on the theory of cone emission from a laser-pumped two-level atomic medium. Starting from microscopic quantum theory for both the active medium and the field, equations for the slowly varying macroscopic quantities are derived. In the steady-state limit, which experimentally corresponds to cw excitation, we find that the sources for the paraxial fields of interest have a long coherence length despite the random nature of spontaneous emission. These radiation sources enter into the equations for the fields in the same form as the source generated by four-wave mixing and therefore may be considered as a ‘‘spontaneous four-wave mixing,’’ since the photons emitted in the Rabi sidebands are correlated. This has far-reaching consequences on the physics of cone emission and also sheds some new light on the fluoresence from strongly driven atomic systems.

• Received 12 November 1991

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.46.2903