Abstract

Our approach to high lattice occupancy requires a way to cool atoms trapped in a far off-resonance lattice (FORL) and an adiabatic compression sequence to increase the spatial density. For the laser cooling to work, the FORL polarizations must be set so that all magnetic sublevels see the same potential due to the FORL. With this condition satisfied, polarization gradient cooling with independent light works at least as well in the FORL at very high atomic density as it does in free space at low density.

© 1999 Optical Society of America