Adiabatic transfer cooling and trapping using narrow-line optical and Raman transitions

A novel cooling mechanism on narrow-linewidth optical transitions has been recently demonstrated. A set of counter-propagating laser beams are swept in frequency in a sawtooth manner to cause adiabatic Landau-Zener transfers between an atom’s ground and excited state, while Doppler shifts provide a time-ordering that ensures the associated photon recoils oppose the atom's motion. We report progress on using this technique to cool strontium and create a 10 $\mu$K 3D MOT for both bosonic and fermionic isotopes. We also demonstrate sub-Doppler cooling in rubidium using artificially-narrow Raman transitions, and we provide a model for extending the technique to other systems without narrow linewidths. Both the experiments and theoretical modeling may find potential applications in cooling molecules or other systems without well-defined cycling transitions or for systems with large inhomogeneous broadening.