Sub-Doppler cooling

Sub-Doppler cooling is a class of laser cooling techniques that reduce the temperature of atoms and molecules below the Doppler cooling limit. In experiment implementation, Doppler cooling is limited by the broad natural linewidth of the lasers used in cooling. Regardless of the transition used, however, Doppler cooling processes have an intrinsic cooling limit that is characterized by the momentum recoil from the emission of a photon from the particle. This is called the recoil temperature and is usually far below the linewidth-based limit mentioned above.

Methods of sub-Doppler cooling include optical molasses, Sisyphus cooling, evaporative cooling, free space Raman cooling, Raman side-band cooling, resolved sideband cooling, polarization gradient cooling, electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) cooling, and the use of a dark magneto-optical trap. These techniques can be used independently or combined in an experimental sequence, depending on the minimum temperature needed and specifications of the individual setup. For example, an optical molasses time-of-flight technique was used to cool sodium (Doppler limit $$ T_D \approx 240 \ \mu K$$) to $ 43 \pm 20 \ \mu K$.

Motivations for sub-doppler cooling include motional ground state cooling, cooling to the motional ground state, a requirement for maintaining fidelity during many quantum computation operations.

Dark magneto-optical trap
A magneto-optical trap (MOT) is commonly used for cooling and trapping a substance by Doppler cooling. In the process of Doppler cooling, the red detuned light would be absorbed by atoms from one certain direction and re-emitted in a random direction. The electrons of the atoms would decay to an alternative ground states if the atoms have more than one hyperfine ground level. There is the case of all the atoms in the other ground states rather than the ground states of Doppler cooling, then system cannot cool the atoms further.

In order to solve this problem, the other re-pumping light would be incident on the system to repopulate the atoms to restart the Doppler cooling process. This would induce higher amounts of fluorescence being emitted from the atoms which can be absorbed by other atoms, acting as a repulsive force. Due to this problem, the Doppler limit would increase and is easy to meet. When there is a dark spot or lines on the shape of the re-pumping light, the atoms in the middle of the atomic gas would not be excited by the re-pumping light which can decrease the repulsion force from the previous cases.

This can help to cool the atoms to a lower temperature than the typical Doppler cooling limit. This is called a dark magneto-optical trap (DMOT).