A quantum approach to cavity mediated laser cooling

Cavity-mediated cooling has the potential to become one of the most efficient techniques to cool molecular species down to very low temperatures. This thesis studies the
use of rate equations to analyse the cooling process in such systems. In particular the master equation is used to find rate equations that can determine the rate of change
of phonons in the system. The general idea behind cavity cooling is the continuous conversion of phonons into cavity photons. While there is no spontaneous emission and
decay rate associated with the concept of phonons, photons are created after a change in the phonon number has occurred and can then leak out through the cavity mirrors
easily. Hence the conversion of phonons into photons can result in the constant removal of phonon energy from the system.

In this thesis we compare cavity mediated cooling with single particle laser cooling. It is shown that cavity cooling is essentially the same as ordinary laser cooling. This is done by calculating the stationary state phonon number mss and the cooling rate y as a function of the system parameters. For example, when the trap phonon frequency υ is either much larger or much smaller than the cavity decay rate k , the minimum stationary state phonon number scales as k²/16v² (strong confinement regime) and as k/4 (weak confinement regime), respectively. Replacing k with Ѓ yields the steady states associated with ordinary laser cooling.