Lévy Statistics And Laser Cooling - How Rare Events Bring Atoms To Rest François Bardou

Résumé :

Laser cooling of atoms provides an ideal case study for the application of Lévy statistics in a privileged situation where the statistical models can be derived from first principles. This book establishes profitable connections between these two research fields, and demonstrates how the most efficient laser cooling techniques can be simply and quantitatively understood in terms of non-ergodic random processes dominated by a few rare events. Lévy statistics is now recognized as the proper framework for analysing many different problems (in physics, biology, earth sciences, finance, etc.) for which standard Gaussian statistics is inadequate. It involves random variables with such broad distributions that the usual central limit theorem no longer holds. On the other hand, laser cooling-a new research field with many applications-allows atoms to be brought to very low temperatures, almost to rest. It provides a fruitful example of how approaches based on Lévy statistics can yield analytic predictions that can then be compared with microscopic quantum optics treatments and to experimental results. The authors of this book are world leaders in the fields of laser cooling, light-atom interactions and statistical physics, and are also renowned for their clarity of exposition. Since the subject of this book embraces several different research areas, the authors have made every effort to ensure that it remains comprehensible to the non-specialist. They explain the important concepts of laser cooling and give an introduction to the concept of random walks and Lévy statistics, such that no detailed prior knowledge is required. This book will therefore be of great interest to researchers in the fields of atomic physics, quantum optics, and statistical physics, as well as to engineers and mathematicians interested in stochastic processes. It will also be most useful for illustrating graduate courses on these topics.

A propos de l'auteur :

François Bardou is a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in the Institut de Physique et de Chimie des Matériaux de Strasbourg where he works on problems of quantum stochastics. He received the 1995 Aimé Cotton prize for his experimental and theoretical studies of laser cooling. These studies, in collaboration with his co-authors, form the basis of this book.

Jean-Philippe Bouchaud is a Senior Expert at the Service de Physique de l'Etat Condensé at the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique in Saclay, and has diverse research interests that include statistical physics, granular matter, and theoretical finance.

Alain Aspect is a Director of Research (CNRS) at the Institut d'Optique, Orsay; a Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau; and also a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences. His present research interests are atomic mirrors, Bose-Einstein condensates, and atom lasers.

Claude Cohen-Tannoudji is Professor of Atomic and Molecular Physics at the Collège de France and has a research group at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. In 1997 he was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.

Sommaire :

Besoin d'en savoir plus sur ce produit ?