While a typical Sodium MOT can cool atoms down to 300μK, optical molasses can cool the atoms down to 40μK, an order of magnitude colder.
Typically, atomic ions that can be directly laser cooled are used to cool nearby ions or atoms, by way of their mutual Coulomb interaction.
The importance of single photon cooling is that it provides a general method for cooling multi-level atoms or molecules.
Buffer gas loading techniques have been developed for use in cooling paramagnetic atoms and molecules at ultra-cold temperatures.
Typically, atomic ions that can be directly laser-cooled are used to cool nearby ions or atoms.
Einstein demonstrated that cooling bosonic atoms to a very low temperature would cause them to fall (or "condense") into the lowest accessible quantum state, resulting in a new form of matter.
Although such traps have been employed for many purposes in physics research, they are best known as the last stage in cooling atoms to achieve Bose-Einstein condensation.
Laser cooling in a magneto-optical trap (MOT) is typically used to cool atoms down to the microkelvin range.
Resolved sideband cooling is a laser cooling technique that can be used to cool strongly trapped atoms to the quantum ground state of their motion.
In 1988, he found he was able to cool atoms below the theoretical limits, throwing an aspect of physical theory into doubt.