Beyond Einstein's radiation theory

Einstein's radiation mechanism is generalized to account for the possibility of population inversion by placing a nonlinear bound on the growth of an unstable perturbation. The nonstationary linear mechanism of relaxation to blackbody radiation below threshold is studied. The nonstationary photon distribution is the negative binomial distribution, and casting it as a law of error, for which the most probable value is the mean value, gives the expression for the statistical entropy. The second law yields a nonequilibrium generalization of Planck's radiation law. The nonlinear mechanism leading to the transformation from the negative binomial probability distribution, for chaotic light, to a Poisson probability distribution, for coherent light, is then analyzed. A criterion for lasing is given in terms of the chemical potential of radiation which is compared to the inequality for the transition from quantum to classical statistics.