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
\( T_{{recoil}}={\frac {\hbar ^{2}k^{2}}{2mk_{B}}}, \)
since the photon's momentum is \( p = \hbar k \) (here k is the wavevector of the light, m is the mass of an atom, \( k_{B} \) is Boltzmann's constant and \( \hbar \) 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]
See also: Doppler cooling, Raman cooling, and Mössbauer effect
References
Metcalf and van der Straten (1999). Laser Cooling and Trapping. New York: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-98728-2.
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.
Cohen-Tannoudji, C. (2004). Atoms in electromagnetic fields (2nd ed.). Singapore: World Scientific. ISBN 978-9812560193.
Hellenica World - Scientific Library
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/"
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
