Collective cooling and self-organization of atoms in a cavity

The correlated dynamics of N coherently driven two-level atoms coupled to a single, standing-wave cavity mode is theoretically investigated. The presence of many atoms has clearly an influence on the cavity-cooling schemes. All atoms are simultaneously coupled to the same field mode as dissipation channel, and the cavity-mediated atomic cross-talk is expected to perturb the cooling process of one atom by the motion of the others. Contrarily, it is shown that, it is possible to make use of the indirect atom-atom interaction, and to enhance the cooling efficiency by a cooperative action of the atomic ensemble.