Sympathetic Cooling of Lattice Atoms by a Bose-Einstein Condensate
Abstract
Laser cooling has become a popular method for enabling studies of quantum interactions. It has brought about various recent experimental achievements, ranging from the creation of Bose-Einstien condensates (BEC)[1], to the quantum teleportation of information over long distances[2]. Despite the variety of experimental techniques currently available to the laser cooling community, there is an ever present need for atoms to be colder. Quantum computation and simulation are two of the driving forces behind this, and are often limited by heating of atoms during gate implementation, or by the need for extremely low temperatures for many body states. Laser excitations of atoms can easily cause heating and addition of entropy, however the powerful tool of laser cooling is based on the fact that under specific circumstances they can induce the opposite effect. For example, if an atom absorbs a photon whose momentum is in opposition to its own, its total momentum will decrease. At some later time this photon will be re-emitted from the atom in a random direction, giving the atom a kick. If this atom undergoes many such scattering events there will be a net force on the atom in the direction of the laser, because the random emissions of the photons will average out to zero net change in momentum. This type of cooling is the basis for techniques such as Zeeman slowing and Magneto-optical traps.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 13, 2010
- Accession Number
- ADA633591
Entities
People
- Daniel Schwartz
Organizations
- University of Maryland