Chinese Physics Letters
Raman Sideband Cooling of Two-Valence-Electron Fermionic Atoms
Guohui Li, Xinye Xu
Abstract
We propose a method for laser cooling two-valence-electron fermionic atoms. Our protocol employs resolved-sideband cooling on the stimulated Raman transition between the two magnetic sublevels (m = F and m = F − 1) of the ground state with total angular momentum F. The optical pumping from m = F − 1 to 1 P 1 are used to decouple atoms in the m = F − 1 state. We calculate the Raman coupling generated by an engineered optical lattice. The result shows that it is possible to laser cool the two-valence-electron fermionic atoms to the ground state. The atoms in the ground state provide a new system for quantum optics.