MPS-RR 2000-19
May 2000

Light, Atoms, and Singularities

Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen

Jens Ledet Jensen

Fred Espen Benth

Abstract

Motivated by questions concerning cooling and trapping of atoms using counterpropagating laser beams we consider continuous time Markovian jump processes with singular jump intensities and some related stochastic processes, modeling the atomic momentum. The asymptotic behaviour of these processes as time goes to infinity is studied, in particular drawing on methods from renewal theory. Results from this type of study have been instrumental for the understanding and improvement of the efficiency of the cooling schemes.

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