Doppler cooling of gallium atoms: 2. Simulation in complex multilevel systems

TL;DR

This paper presents a robust numerical method for simulating laser cooling in complex multilevel atomic systems, demonstrated on gallium isotope 66Ga, improving accuracy and efficiency over standard approaches.

Contribution

A new systematic numerical approach for solving Lindblad equations in multilevel systems, enabling detailed analysis of laser cooling and dark-state formation.

Findings

Enhanced numerical method for master equations

Application to gallium isotope 66Ga cooling

Insights into radiation pressure and dark states

Abstract

This paper derives a general procedure for the numerical solution of the Lindblad equations that govern the coherences arising from multicoloured light interacting with a multilevel system. A systematic approach to finding the conservative and dissipative terms is derived and applied to the laser cooling of gallium. An improved numerical method is developed to solve the time-dependent master equation and results are presented for transient cooling processes. The method is significantly more robust, efficient and accurate than the standard method and can be applied to a broad range of atomic and molecular systems. Radiation pressure forces and the formation of dynamic dark-states are studied in the gallium isotope 66Ga.