François Bardou obtained his Ph.D. in 1995 at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris for his experimental and theoretical studies of laser cooling below the one photon recoil, and was the 1995 winner of the Aimé Cotton prize (Atomic Physics prize of the French Physical Society). He now works at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) where he works on stochastic problems in quantum tunnelling.
1. Introduction
2. Subrecoil laser cooling and anomalous random walks
3. Trapping and recyling. Statistical properties
4. Broad distributions and Lévy statistics: a brief overview
5. Proportion of atoms trapped in quasi-dark states
6. Momentum distribution
7. Physical discussion
8. Tests of the statistical approach
9. Example of application: optimization of the peak of cooled atoms
10. Conclusion
Appendix A. Correspondence of the parameters of the statistical models with atomic and laser parameters
Appendix B. The Doppler case
Appendix C. The special case mu = 1.
