Doppler cooling of three-level Λ systems by coherent pulse trains

摘要

We explore the possibility of decelerating and Doppler cooling an ensemble of three-level Λ-type atoms by a coherent train of short, nonoverlapping laser pulses. We show that Λ atoms can be Doppler cooled without additional repumping of the population from the intermediate ground state. We derive an analytical expression for the scattering force in the quasi-steady-state regime and analyze its dependence on pulse-train parameters. Based on this analysis we propose a method of choosing pulse-train parameters to optimize the cooling process.