Levy Statistics And Laser Cooling. How Rare Events Bring Atoms To Rest

Laser cooling of atoms provides an ideal case study for the application of Lévy statistics in a privileged situation where the statistical models can be derived from first principles. This book establishes profitable connections between these two research fields, and 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 is now recognized as the proper framework for analysing many different problems (in physics, biology, earth sciences, finance, etc.) for which standard Gaussian statistics is inadequate. It involves random variables with such broad distributions that the usual central limit theorem no longer holds. On the other hand, laser cooling-a new research field with many applications-allows atoms to be brought to very low temperatures, almost to rest. It provides a fruitful example of how approaches based on Lévy statistics can yield analytic predictions that can then be compared with microscopic quantum optics treatments and to experimental results. The authors of this book are world leaders in the fields of laser cooling, light-atom interactions and statistical physics, and are also renowned for their clarity of exposition. Since the subject of this book embraces several different research areas, the authors have made every effort to ensure that it remains comprehensible to the non-specialist. They explain the important concepts of laser cooling and give an introduction to the concept of random walks and Lévy statistics, such that no detailed prior knowledge is required. This book will therefore be of great interest to researchers in the fields of atomic physics, quantum optics, and statistical physics, as well as to engineers and mathematicians interested in stochastic processes. It will also be most useful for illustrating graduate courses on these topics.