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Laser Cooling below the One-Photon Recoil Energy by Velocity-Selective Coherent Population Trapping

A. Aspect, E. Arimondo, R. Kaiser, N. Vansteenkiste, and C. Cohen-Tannoudji
Phys. Rev. Lett. 61, 826 – Published 15 August 1988
An article within the collection: The Physical Review Journals Celebrate The International Year of Light and the Letters from the Past - A PRL Retrospective
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Abstract

We present a new laser-cooling scheme based on velocity-selective optical pumping of atoms into a nonabsorbing coherent superposition of states. This method has allowed us to achieve transverse cooling of metastable He4 atoms to a temperature of 2 μK, lower than both the usual Doppler cooling limit (23 μK) and the one-photon recoil energy (4 μK). The corresponding de Broglie wavelength (1.4 μm) is larger than the atomic-transition optical wavelength.

  • Received 11 July 1988

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.61.826

©1988 American Physical Society

Collections

This article appears in the following collections:

The Physical Review Journals Celebrate The International Year of Light

The editors of the Physical Review journals revisit papers that represent important breakthroughs in the field of optics.

Letters from the Past - A PRL Retrospective

2008 marked PRL’s 50th anniversary. As part of the celebrations a collection of milestone Letters was started. The collection contains Letters that have made long-lived contributions to physics, either by announcing significant discoveries, or by initiating new areas of research.

Authors & Affiliations

A. Aspect, E. Arimondo*, R. Kaiser, N. Vansteenkiste, and C. Cohen-Tannoudji

  • Laboratoire de Spectroscopie Hertzienne de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure et Collège de France, F-75231 Paris Cedex 05, France

  • *Permanent address: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pisa, I-56100 Pisa, Italy.

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Issue

Vol. 61, Iss. 7 — 15 August 1988

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