Prospects for single photon sideband cooling in fermionic Lithium

TL;DR

This paper explores the feasibility of single photon sideband cooling for fermionic Lithium atoms in an optical lattice, demonstrating potential to achieve 99% ground state occupancy through combined analytical, numerical, and Monte Carlo methods.

Contribution

It provides an analytical model and simulations for single photon sideband cooling of fermionic Lithium, including effects of the hyperfine spectrum and different laser configurations.

Findings

Achieved 99% ground state occupancy in simulations

Developed an analytical model for cooling dynamics

Demonstrated effectiveness of laser frequency sweep

Abstract

We present an analytic and numerical study for realizing single photon sideband cooling in an ultracold sample of fermionic Lithium trapped in a periodic optical potential. We develop an analytical model and obtain a master equation for the bound level populations. The cooling sequence is simulated both with a laser at a fixed frequency and with a frequency sweep. Finally, a Monte Carlo simulation is performed taking into account the full hyperfine spectrum of $^6\!$Li. We find that a gas of $^6\!$Li atoms loaded from a Magneto-Optical trap into a deep optical lattice can be cooled down to a $99\%$ occupancy of the lattice ground state after a 5mm single photon sideband cooling using the D1 line of Li.