Fast Optimal Frictionless Atom Cooling in Harmonic Traps: Shortcut to Adiabaticity

Feb 11, 2010
Published in:
  • Phys.Rev.Lett. 104 (2010) 6, 063002
  • Published: Feb 11, 2010

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Abstract: (APS)
A method is proposed to cool down atoms in a harmonic trap without phase-space compression as in a perfectly slow adiabatic expansion, i.e., keeping the same populations of instantaneous levels in the initial and final traps, but in a much shorter time. This may require that the harmonic trap become transiently an expulsive parabolic potential. The cooling times achieved are shorter than those obtained using optimal-control bang-bang methods and real frequencies.