Cooling atoms with a moving one-way barrier

We implement and demonstrate the effectiveness of a cooling scheme using a moving, all-optical, one-way barrier to cool a sample of ⁸⁷Rb atoms, achieving nearly a factor of 2 reduction in temperature. The one-way barrier, composed of two focused, Gaussian laser beams, allows atoms incident on one side to transmit, while reflecting atoms incident on the other. The one-way barrier is adiabatically swept through a sample of atoms contained in a far-off-resonant, single-beam, optical dipole trap that forms a nearly harmonic trapping potential. As the barrier moves longitudinally through the potential, atoms become trapped to one side of the barrier with reduced kinetic energy. The adiabatic translation of the barrier leaves the atoms at the bottom of the trapping potential, only minimally increasing their kinetic energy.