Transient Laser Cooling

Authors

S. Padua, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York
C. Xie, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York
R. Gupta, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York
Herman Batelaan, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
T. Bergeman, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York
Harold Metcalf, SUNY Stony BrookFollow

Date of this Version

1993

Document Type

Article

Citation

Physical Review Letters Volume 70, Number 21 May 1993

Comments

Copyright 1993 The American Physical Society. Used by permission.

Abstract

We observed a new type of sub-Doppler cooling that employs neither polarization gradients nor magnetic fields, and involves neither a damping force nor significant diftusive heating. Instead, light shifts combined with optical pumping (OP) to levels not coupled by the laser field gives transient cooling, and steady state is not achieved. The time scale is set by the OP rate. We observe both cooling and heating, but often with the opposite detuning from that of steady state. A semiclassical and a fully quantum mechanical calculation of transient cooling agree very well with one another and with our data.