Laser Cooling

Laser cooling refers to a number of techniques in which atomic and molecular samples are cooled down to near absolute zero through the interaction with one or more laser light fields.

The first example of laser cooling, and also still the most common method (so much so that it is still often referred to simply as 'laser cooling') is Doppler cooling. Other methods of laser cooling include:

• Sisyphus cooling
• Resolved sideband cooling
• Velocity selective coherent population trapping (VSCPT)
• Anti-Stokes inelastic light scattering (typically in the form of fluorescence or Raman scattering)
• Cavity mediated cooling
• Sympathetic cooling
• Use of a Zeeman slower