The recent fascinating progress on laser cooling is the result of the close connection between theoretical work and the rapid technological advances in laser sources, particularly in the field of powerful semiconductor and solid-state lasers operating over a wide range of optical and near-infrared frequencies. The very close international and personal collaboration amongst the researchers resulting in a direct link between experimental data and theoretical calculations which characterize work in this field, have been important factors in the rapid comprehension of the subtle and beautiful phenomena involved in laser manipulation. This Enrico Fermi school is the first formal school fully devoted to this topic. The theoretical part of the book includes contributions on the framework for the study of the photon momentum exchanges in the absence of relaxation, recent mechanisms of laser cooling, an analysis of the cooling forces, analysis of atomic and molecular beams, cooling through coherent population trapping and the relation between laser cooling and quantum nondemolition measurements. The experimental section deals with topics such as, an analysis of atomic and molecular beams, methods and applications of laser cooling, advances in laser cooling and the new exciting field of atomic interferometry. All students and researchers working in this field will welcome this excellent review of research and progress in laser cooling, so strongly linked to the fundamental understanding of physics.

Intended for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduates with some basic knowledge of optics and quantum mechanics, this text begins with a review of the relevant results of quantum mechanics, before turning to the electromagnetic interactions involved in slowing and trapping atoms and ions, in both magnetic and optical traps. The concluding chapters discuss a broad range of applications, from atomic clocks and studies of collision processes, to diffraction and interference of atomic beams at optical lattices and Bose-Einstein condensation.

The use of laser pulses to alter the internal quantum structure of individual atoms and molecules has applications in quantum information processing, the coherent control of chemical reactions and in quantum-state engineering. This book presents the underlying theory of such quantum-state manipulation for researchers and graduate students. The book provides the equations, and approaches for their solution, which can be applied to complicated multilevel quantum systems. It also gives the background theory for application to isolated atoms or trapped ions, simple molecules and atoms embedded in solids. Particular attention is given to the ways in which quantum changes can be displayed graphically to help readers understand how quantum changes can be controlled.

This book is especially concerned with fundamental theoretical and experimental aspects of relativistic beam physics, recoil, and cooling phenomena in atomic and ion beams and traps, with emphasis on coherence and collective effects. The central theme is the physics of atomic laser and free electron laser, and the development of a bridge between them through the mechanism of the so-called recoil induced gain mechanism. The links between relativistic beam physics and atomic laser physics are explored. This book is targeted at an audience of non-specialists or specialists in only one of the fields mentioned above. It addresses the following topics: Fundamentals of laser cooling and trapping of atoms: theory and experiments; Quantum optics and atomic coherence effects; Laser cooling of trapped ions; from single ion to ion crystal; Spatio-temporal instabilities in optical systems; Coherence in atom optics; atomic diffraction and interferometry; Optical lattices; nonlinear effects in laser-cooled atoms; Coherent population trapping; Two-level gain and collective recoil-induced effects; Fundamental physics of relativistic particles beams; High-gain free electron laser: theory, experiments and projects; Cooling of ion beams in a storage ring; Experiments on dense laser-cooled stored ion beams.

This volume is a collection of the Nobel Lectures delivered by the prizewinners, together with their biographies, portraits and the presentation speeches for the period 1996 ? 2000. Each Nobel Lecture is based on the work that won the prize. This volume of inspiring lectures by outstanding physicists should be on the bookshelf of every keen student, teacher and professor of physics as well as of those in related fields.Below is a list of the prizewinners during the period 1996 ? 2000 with a description of the works which won them their prizes.(1996) D M LEE, D D OSHEROFF & R C RICHARDSON ? for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3; (1997) S CHU, C COHEN-TANNOUDJI & W D PHILLIPS ? for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light; (1998) R B LAUGHLIN, H L ST™RMER & D C TSUI ? for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations; (1999) G 't HOOFT & M J G VELTMAN ? for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics; (2000) Z I ALFEROV & H KROEMER ? for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed and opto-electronics and; J S KILBY ? for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit.