Recoil temperature

In laser cooling, the Boltzmann constant times the recoil temperature is equal to the recoil energy deposited in a single atom initially at rest by the spontaneous emission of a single photon.[1] The recoil temperature is

,

since the photon's momentum is (here is the wavevector of the light, is the mass of an atom, is Boltzmann's constant and is Planck's constant). The recoil temperature for the D2 lines of alkali atoms is typically on the order of 1 μK, and thus lower than the Doppler temperature.[2] An example of a process where the recoil temperature can be reached is Sisyphus cooling.[3]

References

  1. Metcalf and van der Straten (1999). Laser Cooling and Trapping. New York: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-98728-2.
  2. Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude N. (1 July 1998). "Nobel Lecture: Manipulating atoms with photons". Reviews of Modern Physics. 70 (3): 707–719. Bibcode:1998RvMP...70..707C. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.70.707.
  3. Cohen-Tannoudji, C. (2004). Atoms in electromagnetic fields (2nd ed.). Singapore: World Scientific. ISBN 978-9812560193.


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