 This brings to light a crucial point concerning the role of dissipation in the operation of a laser or other CQED device; dissipation is the means by which the system (coupled atom/cavity) interacts with its environment.To this end, dissipation is included by framing the problem in terms of the master equation, where the last two terms are in the Lindblad form

The equations of motion for the expectation values of the operators can be derived from the master equation by the formulas formula_31 and formula_32.The equations of motion for formula_33, formula_34, and formula_35, the cavity field, atomic coherence, and atomic inversion respectively, are

At this point, we have produced three of an infinite ladder of coupled equations.