Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Recoil temperature

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In laser cooling, the Boltzmann constant times the recoil temperature is equal to the recoil energy deposited in a single atom initially at rest by the spontaneous emission of a single photon. The recoil temperature is

T r e c o i l = 2 k 2 2 m k B ,

since the photon's momentum is p = k (here k is the wavevector of the light, m is the mass of an atom, k B is Boltzmann's constant and is Planck's constant). The recoil temperature for the D2 lines of alkali atoms is typically on the order of 1 μK, and thus lower than the Doppler temperature. An example of a process where the recoil temperature can be reached is Sisyphus cooling.

References

Recoil temperature Wikipedia