Atom trapping in nondissipative optical lattices

Laser-cooled Li-7 atoms have been confined in three-dimensional spatially periodic potentials that are nearly conservative. The potentials were formed from the intersection of four laser beams far-detuned from the optical resonance. By adjusting the relative orientations of the beams, lattices with primitive translation vectors larger than the laser light wavelength were created. We achieved an effective temperature of similar to 80 mu K through adiabatic reduction of the confining potential strength, and prepared ensembles with effective temperatures of similar to 1.8 mu K by initially confining atoms in weak potentials.