Dark-state cooling of atoms by superfluid immersion.

We propose and analyze a scheme to cool atoms in an optical lattice to ultralow temperatures within a Bloch band and away from commensurate filling. The protocol is inspired by ideas from dark-state laser cooling but replaces electronic states with motional levels and spontaneous emission of photons...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Griessner, A, Daley, A, Clark, SR, Jaksch, D, Zoller, P
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: 2006
Description
Summary:We propose and analyze a scheme to cool atoms in an optical lattice to ultralow temperatures within a Bloch band and away from commensurate filling. The protocol is inspired by ideas from dark-state laser cooling but replaces electronic states with motional levels and spontaneous emission of photons by emission of phonons into a Bose-Einstein condensate, in which the lattice is immersed. In our model, achievable temperatures correspond to a small fraction of the Bloch bandwidth and are much lower than the reservoir temperature. This is also a novel realization of an open quantum optical system, where known tools are combined with new ideas involving cooling via a reservoir.