Raman sideband cooling of rubidium atoms in optical lattice

We develop a simple and practical scheme to apply sideband cooling to a cloud of rubidium atoms. A sample containing 4 × 10${}^{70}$ ${}^{87}$Rb is trapped in a far red detuned optical lattice. Through optimizing the relevant parameters, i.e., laser detuning, magnetic field, polarization, and duration time, a temperature around 1.5 μK and phase space density close to 1/500 are achieved. Compared with polarization gradient cooling, the temperature decreases by around one order of magnitude. This technique could be used in high precision measurement such as atomic clocks and atom interferometer. It could also serve as a precooling means before evaporation cooling in a dipole trap, and may be a promising method of achieving quantum degeneracy with purely optical means. (paper)