A further look at waveguide lasers

A new approach to the dynamical evolution of a waveguide laser is presented which goes beyond the usual Maxwell-Bloch (MB) equations in that it takes fully into account the phase of the matter quantum field that describes the atomic systems. As an experimental check of its effectiveness, we analyze in its light a recent set of experiments on the effects of a "dephasing" of the electromagnetic laser field that find no explanation within the MB equations but, on the contrary, are in very good agreement with its expectations.