2-DIMENSIONAL SISYPHUS COOLING IN A THREE-BEAM LASER CONFIGURATION

Calculations on the steady-state distribution of atoms cooled in three coplanar laser beams are presented. For this three-beam configuration , the achievements of Sisyphus cooling are independent of fluctuations in the relative time phases between the beams. The atomic motion is q uantized and the steady-state solution of the density-matrix equations is found within a secular approximation. We obtain a minimum width of the cooled momentum distributions on the order of six photon momenta.