Abstract

An analytical description of the collisions between atoms in a laser cooling field is developed. The results confirm predictions made in our recent numerical simulations for the same model. The effect of the collision can be separated analytically, to first order in a perturbation expansion in collision strength, into two parts. The first of these parts comes from the interruption of the laser cooling cycle in each atom, and the second from the direct force resulting from a photon exchange between the atoms.

© 1992 Optical Society of America

Effect of diffusion on laser cooling of atoms with long-range collisions

A. M. Smith and K. Burnett
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 9(8) 1240-1255 (1992)

Effect of long-range collisions between atoms on laser cooling

A. M. Smith and K. Burnett
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 8(8) 1592-1611 (1991)

Temporal behavior of the velocity distribution function and the influence of collisions in laser cooling

V. A. Alekseev and D. D. Krylova
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 10(9) 1545-1552 (1993)

Sisyphus cooling of a bound atom

D. J. Wineland, J. Dalibard, and C. Cohen-Tannoudji
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 9(1) 32-42 (1992)

Collisions of ultracold trapped atoms

Paul S. Julienne and Frederick H. Mies
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 6(11) 2257-2269 (1989)