Lévy statistics and laser cooling : how rare events bring atoms to rest / François Bardou [and others].

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bardou, François, 1967- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Laser manipulation (Nuclear physics).

Laser cooling.

Atoms--Cooling.

Atoms.

Lévy processes.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 199 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Lévy Statistics & Laser Cooling

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Laser cooling of atoms provides an ideal case study for the application of Lévy statistics in a privileged situation where the statistical model can be derived from first principles. This book demonstrates how the most efficient laser cooling techniques can be simply and quantitatively understood in terms of non-ergodic random processes dominated by a few rare events. Lévy statistics are now recognised as the proper tool for analysing many different problems for which standard Gaussian statistics are inadequate. Laser cooling provides a simple example of how Lévy statistics can yield analytic predictions that can be compared to other theoretical approaches and experimental results. The authors of this book are world leaders in the fields of laser cooling and light-atom interactions, and are renowned for their clear presentation. This book will therefore hold much interest for graduate students and researchers in the fields of atomic physics, quantum optics, and statistical physics.

Contents:

Laser cooling

Subrecoil laser cooling

Subrecoil cooling and Levy statistics

Subrecoil laser cooling and anomalous random walks

Standard laser cooling: friction forces and the recoil limit

Friction forces and cooling

The recoil limit

Laser cooling based on inhomogeneous random walks in momentum space

Physical mechanism

How to create an inhomogeneous random walk

Expected cooling properties

Quantum description of subrecoil laser cooling

Wave nature of atomic motion

Difficulties of the standard quantum treatment

Quantum jump description. The delay function

Simulation of the atomic momentum stochastic evolution

Generalization. Stochastic wave functions and random walks in Hilbert space

From quantum optics to classical random walks

Fictitious classical particle associated with the quantum random walk

Simplified jump rate

Trapping and recycling. Statistical properties

Trapping and recycling regions

Models of inhomogeneous random walks

Friction

Trapping region

Recycling region

Momentum jumps

Probability distribution of the trapping times

One-dimensional quadratic jump rate

Generalization to higher dimensions

Generalization to a non-quadratic jump rate

Probability distribution of the recycling times

Presentation of the problem: first return time in Brownian motion

The unconfined model in one dimension

The Doppler model in one dimension

The confined model: random walk with walls

Broad distributions and Levy statistics: a brief overview.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 181-187) and indexes.

ISBN:

1-107-12469-7

1-282-38909-2

0-511-64291-1

9786612389092

0-511-15572-7

0-511-56144-X

0-511-75566-X

0-511-04459-3

OCLC:

475916891