Time dependence of laser cooling in optical lattices

Abstract

We study the dynamics of the cooling of a gas of caesium atoms in an optical lattice, both experimentally and with 1D full-quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We find that, contrary to the standard interpretation of the Sisyphus model, the cooling process does not work by a continuous decrease of the average kinetic energy of the atoms in the lattice. Instead, we show that the momentum of the atoms follows a bimodal distribution, the atoms being gradually transferred from a hot to a cold mode. We suggest that the cooling mechanism should be depicted in terms of a rate model, describing the transfer between the two modes along with the processes occurring within each mode.

7 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Cold atom Clocks and Applications
• Anomalous diffusion and Tsallis statistics in an optical lattice
• Non-Gaussian Velocity Distributions in Optical Lattices
• Temperature and spatial diffusion of atoms cooled in a 3D lin$\perp$lin bright optical lattice
• Prospects for Forbidden-Transition Spectroscopy and Parity Violation Measurements using a Beam of Cold Stable or Radioactive Atoms
• Rayleigh Scattering and Atomic Dynamics in Dissipative Optical Lattices
• Spatial diffusion in a periodic optical lattice: revisiting the Sisyphus effect
• Damping rates of the atomic velocity in Sisyphus cooling

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Demonstration of a controllable three-dimensional Brownian motor in symmetric potentials
• High-order optical nonlinearity at low light levels
• Influence of the lattice topography on a three-dimensional, controllable Brownian motor
• A nonadiabatic semi-classical method for dynamics of atoms in optical lattices
• Bimodal momentum distribution of laser-cooled atoms in optical lattices
• Simulations of Sisyphus cooling including multiple excited states
• Fluctuation-induced drift in a gravitationally tilted optical lattice