Gas of sub-recoiled laser cooled atoms described by infinite ergodic theory

Abstract

The velocity distribution of a classical gas of atoms in thermal equilibrium is the normal Maxwell distribution. It is well known that for sub-recoiled laser cooled atoms L\'evy statistics and deviations from usual ergodic behaviour come into play. Here we show how tools from infinite ergodic theory describe the cool gas. Specifically, we derive the scaling function and the infinite invariant density of a stochastic model for the momentum of laser cooled atoms using two approaches. The first is a direct analysis of the master equation and the second following the analysis of Bertin and Bardou using the lifetime dynamics. The two methods are shown to be identical, but yield different insights into the problem. In the main part of the paper we focus on the case where the laser trapping is strong, namely the rate of escape from the velocity trap is $R(v) \propto |v|^\alpha$ for $v \to 0$ and $\alpha>1$. We construct a machinery to investigate the time averages of physical observables and their relation to ensemble averages. The time averages are given in terms of functionals of the individual stochastic paths, and here we use a generalisation of L\'evy walks to investigate the ergodic properties of the system. Exploring the energy of the system, we show that when $\alpha=3$ it exhibits a transition between phases where it is either an integrable or non integrable observable, with respect to the infinite invariant measure. This transition corresponds to very different properties of the mean energy, and to a discontinuous behaviour of the fluctuations. Since previous experimental work showed that both $\alpha=2$ and $\alpha=4$ are attainable we believe that both phases could be explored also experimentally.