Cooling of a single atom in an optical trap inside a resonator - art. no. 013407

We present detailed discussions of cooling and trapping mechanisms for an a tom in an optical trap inside an optical cavity, as relevant to recent expe riments. The interference pattern of cavity QED and trapping fields in spac e makes the trapping wells, in principle, distinguishable from one another. This adds considerable flexibility to creating effective trapping and cool ing conditions and to detection possibilities. Friction and diffusion coeff icients are calculated in and beyond the low excitation limit and full thre e-dimensional simulations of the quasiclassical motion of a Cs atom are per formed.