LASER COOLING IN A CO2-LASER OPTICAL LATTICE

We report on the trapping of laser-cooled rubidium atoms in the antino des of an infrared standing wave near 10.6 mu m. Intriguing properties of the resulting optical lattice are long coherence times and a large lattice period. We have experimentally verified the localization of t he atoms in the antinodes of the standing wave field by measurement of the vibrational spectrum of the atoms. The phase-space density of the trapped atoms, cooled by optical means only, is less than three order s of magnitude below the threshold of Bose-Einstein condensation.