Laser Cooling in Optical Shaker In the optical shaker, an ensemble of pre-cooled and trapped particles interacts with a standing wave produced by counter-propagating laser beams (Figure on the left). The feedback loop includes photo-detectors recording the intensity of the beams after they cross the interaction region, and an electro-optical modulator that provides sudden phase changes in the laser beams (optical shaking) based on the detectors (D1 and D2) readings. We suggest several feedback algorithms that force the particles to transfer their energy to the electromagnetic field. The numerical simulation of shaking an ensemble of 103 particles confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap demonstrates a decrease of the particle’s mean energy together with phase space volume compression (Figure 1). The optical shaker does not suffer from the density limitations of resonant laser cooling schemes, and opposite to evaporative cooling it does not lead to the loss of trapped particles. Figure 1. Distribution of the particles in the dimensionless phase space at the beginning of the cooling process (after 40 jumps) (a), after 6500 jumps (b), and after 10,000 jumps when the potential was adiabatically switched off (c). The dashed circle represents the initial phase space volume, the solid one represents phase space volume at the corresponding cooling stage. Decelerating and Cooling Particles in Bistable Optical Cavity We propose a generic approach to non-resonant laser cooling of atoms and molecules in a bistable optical cavity. The method exemplifies a photonic version of Sisyphus cooling, in which the matter dressed cavity extracts energy from the particles and discharges it to the external field as a result of sudden transitions between two stable states. Deceleration of a single particle in a weak coupling limit is shown in Figure 2a. Cooling of an ensemble of N = 5 particles is presented in Figure 2b. Figure 2. (a) Particle deceleration in a bistable cavity (red curve). For comparison, the blue curve shows particle slowing in the regular cavity. The insert shows the time dependence of the cavity field intensity in the domain of constant deceleration, field jumps are observed. (b) Evolution of the velocity variance of the ensemble of N = 5 particles during cooling in a bistable cavity (red line) and in conventional cavity (blue line). I. S. Averbukh and Y. Prior, Physical Review Letters 94, 153002 (2005). M. Y. Vilensky, I. S. Averbukh, and Y. Prior, Phys. Rev. A 73, 063402 (2006). M. Y. Vilensky, Y. Prior, and I. S. Averbukh, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 103002 (2007).