Abstract

The recent demonstrations of Bose-Einstein condensation of weakly interacting gases have greatly stimulated the study of quantum statistical effects in the field of atom optics and laser cooling. A large number of different atom trapping and cooling schemes has been investigated. Some of these rely on confinement and optical manipulation of atoms in blue detuned light fields [1] In particular, a crossed doughnut mode trap or a "blue cube” light configuration can be interpreted as atomic resonators where the mode structure is given by the quantized center-of-mass motion of the atoms in the mesoscopic dipole potential. This trapping scheme is motivated by the ultimate goal of generating a macroscopic population of the vibrational ground state.

© 1996 IEEE