Cavity-mediated dark-state cooling without spontaneous emission

We extend the concept of dark state cooling to enclose the fields in a high-Q resonator. Choosing a sufficiently large detuning between the atomic transition and the driving fields, spontaneous emission during the cooling process is largely suppressed and the energy dissipation occurs dominantly via cavity decay. For a ring cavity with two degenerate counterpropagating waves of opposite circular polarization, the final dark state is identical as in free space. However. we find a strong cavity mediated force with a large capture range as a precooling mechanism. In this scheme spontaneous emission is only important for the final jump to the dark state in the dynamics and the reabsorption problem is strongly reduced. In principle the scheme could also be applied to molecules with a suitable transition.