A rate equation approach to cavity mediated laser cooling

TL;DR

This paper analyzes cavity mediated laser cooling using a rate equation approach that includes eta^2 terms, confirming similarities with ordinary cooling but highlighting the need for more detailed models for molecules in strong coupling regimes.

Contribution

It provides a detailed eta^2-based analysis of cavity mediated laser cooling, emphasizing the importance of higher-order terms for accurate modeling in complex scenarios.

Findings

Cooling rate scales as eta^2

Similarities with ordinary laser cooling confirmed

More detailed models needed for molecules in strong coupling

Abstract

The cooling rate for cavity mediated laser cooling scales as the Lamb-Dicke parameter eta squared. A proper analysis of the cooling process hence needs to take terms up to eta^2 in the system dynamics into account. In this paper, we present such an analysis for a standard scenario of cavity mediated laser cooling with eta << 1. Our results confirm that there are many similarities between ordinary and cavity mediated laser cooling. However, for a weakly confined particle inside a strongly coupled cavity, which is the most interesting case for the cooling of molecules, numerical results indicate that even more detailed calculations are needed to model the cooling process accurately.