Abstract

As a theoretical background for an ongoing experiment on longitudinal cooling of an energetic atomic beam by an intense laser field, we generalize the dressed-atom description of the atom–laser interaction from a two-level to a multilevel system. Expressions are presented for the average force on the atom, in particular in the limits of high and low velocities with respect to a standing wave, and the influence of fluctuations is studied through a Monte Carlo simulation. Appreciable cooling is predicted for a beam of 200-eV neon atoms traversing a 75-cm-long resonator in which the energy density is maintained by two 0.5-W cw lasers.

© 1989 Optical Society of America

Laser cooling below the Doppler limit by polarization gradients: simple theoretical models

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