Cooling atoms, particles and polarisable objects using dissipative dipole forces

Abstract

Optical cooling methods are generally applicable to a very restricted range of species. As a means of overcoming this problem, we explore the effect of the retarded interaction of any polarisable particle (an atom, a molecule or even a micromirror) with itself, similarly to cavity-mediated cooling. We use the transfer matrix method, extended to allow us to handle moving scatterers, to explore the most general configuration of a mobile particle interacting with any 1D combination of fixed optical elements. Remarkably, this model allows a solution in closed form for the force acting on the particle, without any a priori restriction on the nature of the particle.