| Abstract: | Laser cooling must be understood in terms of forces and momentum, potentials and energy, as well a thermodynamics. However, the properties of light does not fit well with the usual definitions of thermodynamics, so I will present some thoughts about the entropy exchange. It has long been thought that spontaneous emission is necessary to remove the entropy from a laser cooled vapor, and therefore is necessary for laser cooling. I will argue that this is not necessarily the case, and present some ideas of how to describe the cooling process in the absence of spontaneous emission. |
