Abstract

The techniques of cooling atoms by near resonant laser radiation down to kinetic energies as small as the energy width ħΓ of the excited State have enabled the observation of the dynamics of very slow atoms in laser fields. Surprisingly it was found that at these small velocities additional optical damping mechanisms lead to a further decrease of the momentum width, comparable to the range of a few photon recoil momenta.¹ This damping was found to depend on the polarization gradients imposed by the coherent superposition of several cooling beams.² For 1-D optical molasses it was shown that the spatial mod- ulation of the polarization leads to a motion-induced retarded modulation of the population of the Zeeman sublevels.³

© 1990 Optical Society of America