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Here's the Wikipedia article on laser cooling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_cooling

Its explanation is a bit too surface level for me. Anyone have more details on the mechanism used for this experiment? Would they have used Doppler cooling like is sometimes done on Rb-85?

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Author here. Yes, Doppler Cooling is the first step used in the experiment, in a Magneto Optical Trap [0]. It is followed by Polarization Gradient Cooling [1] to overcome the Doppler limit. Atoms are still way too "hot" after this step, so they are then transferred to a purely magnetical trap and cooled down further via forced evaporation [2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_trap

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus_cooling

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooling_(atomic_ph...

Thanks!!

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