Cooling an atom in a weakly driven high-Q cavity

We investigate the external and internal dynamics of a two-level atom in a standing wave cavity. In the strong coupling regime, where the atom field coupling g dominates the atomic and cavity decay rates (Gamma,kappa), a cooling mechanism entirely different from free-space Doppler cooling appears. Under suitable operating conditions, the cavity dynamics induces a Sisyphus type cooling, which is the dominant contribution to the total friction force acting on a moving atom. Simple equations describing the key properties of this effect are derived from a completely classical picture and confirmed by a semiclassical approach. The model is investigated in the bad and good cavity limits, and analytic expressions for the friction coefficient and the momentum diffusion for slow atoms are derived. Using a continued fractions expansion the cooling force for arbitrary velocities is evaluated numerically. The result is used to calculate the equilibrium temperatures of the atom of the order of kT approximate to (h) over bar kappa, which can be much lower than the free-space Doppler limit and agree well to those obtained by quantum wave-function simulations. [S1050-2947(98)02310-5].