Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Subrecoil laser cooling and anomalous random walks
- 3 Trapping and recycling. Statistical properties
- 4 Broad distributions and Lévy statistics: a brief overview
- 5 The proportion of atoms trapped in quasi-dark states
- 6 The momentum distribution
- 7 Physical discussion
- 8 Tests of the statistical approach
- 9 Example of application: optimization of the peak of cooled atoms
- 10 Conclusion
- Appendix A Correspondence between parameters of the statistical models and atomic and laser parameters
- Appendix B The Doppler case
- Appendix C The special case µ = 1
- References
- Index of main notation
- Index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Subrecoil laser cooling and anomalous random walks
- 3 Trapping and recycling. Statistical properties
- 4 Broad distributions and Lévy statistics: a brief overview
- 5 The proportion of atoms trapped in quasi-dark states
- 6 The momentum distribution
- 7 Physical discussion
- 8 Tests of the statistical approach
- 9 Example of application: optimization of the peak of cooled atoms
- 10 Conclusion
- Appendix A Correspondence between parameters of the statistical models and atomic and laser parameters
- Appendix B The Doppler case
- Appendix C The special case µ = 1
- References
- Index of main notation
- Index
Summary
This book deals with the important developments that have recently occurred in two different research fields, laser manipulation of atoms on the one hand, non-Gaussian statistics and anomalous diffusion processes on the other hand. It turns out that fruitful exchanges of ideas and concepts have taken place between these two apparently disconnected fields. This has led to cross-fertilization of each of them, providing new physical insights into the most efficient laser cooling mechanisms as well as simple and mathematically soluble examples of anomalous random walks.
We thought that it would be useful to present in this book a detailed report of these developments. Our ambition is to try to improve the dialogue between different communities of scientists and, hopefully, to stimulate new, interesting developments. This book is therefore written as a case study accessible to the non-specialist.
Our aim is also to promote, within the atomic physics and quantum optics community, a way to approach and solve problems that is less based on exact solutions, but relies more on the identification of the physically relevant features, thus allowing one to construct simplified, idealized models and qualitative (and sometimes quantitative) solutions. This approach is of course common in statistical physics, where, often, details do not matter, and only robust global features determine the relevant physical properties. Laser cooling is an ideal case study, where the power of this methodology is clearly illustrated.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Lévy Statistics and Laser CoolingHow Rare Events Bring Atoms to Rest, pp. 1 - 6Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001