Quantum-trajectory pictures of laser cooling

Laser cooling to quantum degeneracy.

We report on Bose-Einstein condensation in a gas of strontium atoms, using laser cooling as the only cooling mechanism. The condensate is formed within a sample that is continuously Doppler cooled to below 1  μK on a narrow-linewidth transition. The critical phase-space density for condensation is reached in a central region of the sample, in which atoms are rendered transparent for laser cooli...

Laser Cooling of Semiconductors

Optical irradiation accompanied by spontaneous anti-Stokes emission can lead to cooling of matter, a phenomenon known as laser cooling or optical refrigeration proposed in 1929 by Peter Pringsheim. In solid state materials, the cooling is achieved by annihilation of lattice vibrations (i.e., phonons). Since the first experimental demonstration in rare-earth doped glasses, considerable progress ...

Laser cooling of atoms

The concept of radiation-pressure cooling of atoms was independently suggested in 1975 for the case of a gas of neutral atoms by Hänsch and Schawlow, and for atomic ions bound in an electromagnetic trap by Wineland and Dehmelt. While the notion that momentum exchange from a photon moving in the opposite direction could slow an individual atom was well understood, until this time no one had come...

Simulation of Direct Pumping of Quantum Dots in a Quantum Dot Laser

In this paper, the nonlinear rate equations governing a quantum dot laser isused to simulate the transient as well as the steady-state behaviors of the laser.Computation results show that the rate equations are capable of simulating true behaviorof a quantum dot laser. Then, the pump rates of the rate equations (which show indirectelectrical pumping of the quantum dots through a wetting layer) ...

Transient laser cooling.