Sisyphus cooling

Type of laser cooling

In ultra-low-temperature physics, Sisyphus cooling, the Sisyphus effect, or polarization gradient cooling involves the use of specially selected laser light, hitting atoms from various angles to both cool and trap them in a potential well, effectively rolling the atom down a hill of potential energy until it has lost its kinetic energy. It is a type of laser cooling of atoms used to reach temperatures below the Doppler cooling limit. This cooling method was first proposed by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji in 1989, motivated by earlier experiments which observed sodium atoms cooled below the Doppler limit in an optical molasses. Cohen-Tannoudji received part of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for his work. The technique is named after Sisyphus, a figure in the Greek mythology who was doomed, for all eternity, to roll a stone up a mountain only to have it roll down again whenever he got it near the summit.

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