| Laser cooling of atoms has been a fast growing field of research during the recent years. A generic setting includes a two-level atom coupled to a reservoir of quantum oscillators and driven by a running or standing wave. It has been proposed in a series of papers by Shevy [17,18,19] that the properties of laser cooling may be modified if the atom is in a squeezed vacuum where the quantum fluctuations in one quadrature are less than the usual vacuum fluctuations.; In this thesis the ideas introduced by Shevy are pursued and further developed to demonstrate theoretically that the equilibrium cooling temperatures for the cesium and sodium atoms discussed widely in the literature can reach 21μK and 40μK respectively. These temperatures are reached at higher intensities and very small detuning. The cooling mechanism for the most commonly available states of the quantized electromagnetic field is discussed.; Along the way the role of the photon statistics in reaching the lower temperatures is studied for differently prepared states of the reservoir modes. |
