München 2004 – scientific programme

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Q: Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 6: Gruppenberichte Fallen und Kühlung

Q 6.1: Group Report

Monday, March 22, 2004, 14:00–14:30, HS 224

Cavity cooling of a single atom. — •P. Maunz, T. Puppe, I. Schuster, N. Syassen, P.W.H. Pinkse, and G. Rempe — Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Str. 1, 85748 Garching, Germany

All conventional methods to laser cool atoms rely on repeated cycles of optical pumping followed by dissipation through spontaneous emission in order to remove entropy from the system. Hence they are only applicable to atoms with a nearly closed optical transition. Recently a new cooling mechanism for a single atom strongly coupled to the mode of a high-finesse cavity was predicted [1,2]. In the atom-cavity system photons lost from the cavity can substitute for spontaneous emission from the atom. We observe cavity cooling of a single Rb atom in an intracavity dipole trap by a weak blue-detuned cavity field strongly coupled to the atom. Cavity cooling extends the storage time of a single atom by a factor of two. The observed cooling force is at least 5 times larger than the force achieved for free-space cooling methods [3] with equal excitation of a two-level atom. In the future, cavity cooling could be used to cool molecules without a closed transition, collective excitations of a Bose condensate, or even the motion of an atom carrying a quantum bit.

[1] P. Horak, G. Hechenblaikner, K.M. Gheri, H. Stecher, and H. Ritsch, Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 4974 (1997).

[2] V. Vuletić and S. Chu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 3787 (2000).

[3] J. Dalibard, and C. Cohen-Tannoudji, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 2, 1707 (1985).