Lévy Statistics and Laser Cooling
How Rare Events Bring Atoms to Rest

A graduate-level book demonstrating the application of Lévy statistics to understand laser cooling of atoms.

François Bardou (Author), Jean-Philippe Bouchaud (Author), Alain Aspect (Author), Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (Author)

9780521808217, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 December 2001

214 pages, 41 b/w illus. 2 tables
24.4 x 17 x 1.3 cm, 0.54 kg

'… hard to beat for insight and conceptual clarity.' New Scientist

Laser cooling of atoms provides an ideal case study for the application of Lévy statistics in a privileged situation where the statistical model can be derived from first principles. This book demonstrates how the most efficient laser cooling techniques can be simply and quantitatively understood in terms of non-ergodic random processes dominated by a few rare events. Lévy statistics are now recognised as the proper tool for analysing many different 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 much interest for graduate students and researchers in the fields of atomic physics, quantum optics, and statistical physics.

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.

Subject Areas: Chemical physics [PHVQ], Atomic & molecular physics [PHM], Physics [PH]