1. Atom cooling techniques

1.1 Interaction between light and matter

The mechanical action of light on material objects had already been foreseen by Kepler in the early 17th century. He explained that the tails of comets always point away from the Sun because of the pressure exerted by sunlight on the particles that make up the tail. Although the current explanation of this phenomenon is more complex, it is still qualitatively based on the exchange of impulses between radiation and light. This is the same phenomenon that can lead to the cooling (refinement of velocity around an average speed) or trapping (confinement in space) of atoms by lasers.

The very first experiment to demonstrate the action of light on atoms was carried out by R. Frisch [5]...