Cooling of atoms below the recoil energy under multizone Raman excitation

Cooling of atoms below the temperature determined by the recoil energy is proposed on the basis of the Raman excitation of three-level atoms by the field of standing waves with a relative spatial shift. The advantage of this cooling mechanism is a weak sensitivity to the shape and duration of light pulses used for the transfer of population under Raman excitation. It is shown that the effectiveness of such cooling increases sharply when multizone excitation is used and already several interaction zones are enough for deep transverse cooling of an atomic beam to a temperature significantly lower than the recoil energy.