Collisional effects on the collective laser cooling of trapped bosonic gases

Abstract

We analyse the effects of atom-atom collisions on collective laser cooling scheme. We derive a quantum Master equation which describes the laser cooling in presence of atom-atom collisions in the weak-condensation regime. Using such equation, we perform Monte Carlo simulations of the population dynamics in one and three dimensions. We observe that the ground-state laser-induced condensation is maintained in the presence of collisions. Laser cooling causes a transition from a Bose-Einstein distribution describing collisionally induced equilibrium,to a distribution with an effective zero temperature. We analyse also the effects of atom-atom collisions on the cooling into an excited state of the trap.