2002/04/30 by P. Domokos, Peter Domokos, Thomas Salzburger +4
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0204170
arxiv created 2002/04/30 · openalex publication_date 2002/04/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Cavity-mediated cooling of the center--of--mass motion of a transversally, coherently pumped atom along the axis of a high--Q cavity is studied. The internal dynamics of the atomic dipole strongly coupled to the cavity field is treated by a non-perturbative quantum mechanical model, while the effect of the cavity on the external motion is described classically in terms of the analytically obtained linear friction and diffusion coefficients. Efficient cavity-induced damping is found which leads to steady-state temperatures well-below the Doppler limit. We reveal a mathematical symmetry between the results here and for a similar system where, instead of the atom, the cavity field is pumped. The cooling process is strongly enhanced in a degenerate multimode cavity. Both the temperature and the number of scattered photons during the characteristic cooling time exhibits a significant reduction with increasing number of modes involved in the dynamics. The residual number of spontaneous emissions in a cooling time for large mode degeneracy can reach and even drop below the limit of a single photon.