Sisyphus cooling

deinonychus commented on the word Sisyphus cooling

Sisyphus cooling is a mechanism through which atoms can be cooled using laser beams below the temperatures expected to be achieved by Doppler cooling. It comes about as a result of a polarization gradient created by two counter-propagating laser beams with orthogonal polarization. Atoms moving through the potential landscape created by the standing wave (created by the interference of the two counter-propagating beams) lose kinetic energy as they move to a potential maximum, at which point optical pumping moves them to a lower-energy state, thus losing the potential energy they had. (Wikipedia)

January 31, 2012