Synopses & Reviews
This is a book about laser cooling, a new research field with many potential applications. The authors present an original approach, using the tools and concepts of statistical physics. A new understanding of laser cooling, both intuitive and quantitative, is obtained. The volume also comprises a case study allowing non-Gaussian (Lévy) statistics, a technique being used more frequently in many different fields.
Review
"[This book] is unique in that it covers atomic physics and quantum optics as well as statistical processes.... It would be an excellent reference for a seminar on topics related to laser cooling." Optics and Photonics News"The book is accessible to beginning physics graduate students as well as experienced scientists who would like to get into the field of Lévy statistics or subrecoil cooling of atoms. At any rate this is a valuable reference work." Mathematical Reviews
Synopsis
A graduate-level book demonstrating the application of Lévy statistics to understand laser cooling of atoms.
Synopsis
vy statistics to understand laser cooling of atoms.
Synopsis
Lévy statistics are now recognised as the proper tool for analysing various 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 great interest for graduate students and researchers in atomic physics, quantum optics, and statistical physics.
Synopsis
Lévy statistics are now recognised as the proper tool for analysing various 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 great interest for graduate students and researchers in atomic physics, quantum optics, and statistical physics.
About the Author
François Bardou obtained his Ph.D. in 1995 at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris for his experimental and theoretical studies of laser cooling below the one photon recoil, and was the 1995 winner of the Aimé Cotton prize (Atomic Physics prize of the French Physical Society). He now works at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) where he works on stochastic problems in quantum tunnelling.Jean-Philippe Bouchard is a Senior Expert at the Service de Physique de l'Etat Condense and at CEA-Saclay. In 1994 he founded his own company called Science and Finance, and continues to have diverse research interests which include statistical physics, granular matter and theoretical finance. He is in charge of various statistical physics and finance courses in the Grandes Ecoles, Paris, and is the co-author of Theory of Financial Risk (Cambridge, 2000).Alain Aspect is a Director of Research at CNRS and a Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau. After completing a series of experiments in the early 1980s on the foundations of quantum mechanics, he joined Claude Cohen-Tannoudji at the Ecole Normale Supérieure to work on laser cooling of atoms. He is now head of the Atom Optics group of Institut d'Optique at Orsay and is the co-author of Introduction to Lasers and Quantum Optics (Cambridge, in preparation).Claude Cohen-Tannoudji is Professor of Atomic and Molecular Physics at the Collège de France in Paris and was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997 for his work on the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. He is also the co-author of three other books: Quantum Mechanics (1992), Photons and Atoms: Introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics (1989), and Atom-Photon Interactions: Basic Processes and Applications (1998).
Table of Contents
1. Introduction; 2. Subrecoil laser cooling and anomalous random walks; 3. Trapping and recyling. Statistical properties; 4. Broad distributions and Lévy statistics: a brief overview; 5. Proportion of atoms trapped in quasi-dark states; 6. Momentum distribution; 7. Physical discussion; 8. Tests of the statistical approach; 9. Example of application: optimization of the peak of cooled atoms; 10. Conclusion; Appendix A. Correspondence of the parameters of the statistical models with atomic and laser parameters; Appendix B. The Doppler case; Appendix C. The special case mu = 1.