Atom slowing via dispersive optical interactions

A promising technique of atom slowing is proposed. It is based upon the dispersive interaction of atoms with optical potential pulses generated by a far-off-resonance standing wave modulated in time. Each pulse reduces the velocity by a small amount. By repeating the process thousands of times, the velocity can be lowered from several hundreds of meters per second down to almost zero, over a path as short as 20cm. In the absence of any random recoil process, the initial characteristics of the beam are preserved.