Cavity cooling of a single atom

P. Maunz, T. Puppe, I. Schuster, N. Syassen, P. W. H. Pinkse and G. Rempe ()
Additional contact information
P. Maunz: Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik
T. Puppe: Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik
I. Schuster: Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik
N. Syassen: Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik
P. W. H. Pinkse: Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik
G. Rempe: Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik

Nature, 2004, vol. 428, issue 6978, 50-52

Abstract: Abstract All conventional methods to laser-cool atoms rely on repeated cycles of optical pumping and spontaneous emission of a photon by the atom. Spontaneous emission in a random direction provides the dissipative mechanism required to remove entropy from the atom. However, alternative cooling methods have been proposed1,2 for a single atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse cavity; the role of spontaneous emission is replaced by the escape of a photon from the cavity. Application of such cooling schemes would improve the performance of atom–cavity systems for quantum information processing3,4. Furthermore, as cavity cooling does not rely on spontaneous emission, it can be applied to systems that cannot be laser-cooled by conventional methods; these include molecules2 (which do not have a closed transition) and collective excitations of Bose condensates5, which are destroyed by randomly directed recoil kicks. Here we demonstrate cavity cooling of single rubidium atoms stored in an intracavity dipole trap. The cooling mechanism results in extended storage times and improved localization of atoms. We estimate that the observed cooling rate is at least five times larger than that produced by free-space cooling methods, for comparable excitation of the atom.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02387 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:428:y:2004:i:6978:d:10.1038_nature02387

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature02387

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().