Evidence for cooling in an optical lattice by amplitude modulation

We report on a generic cooling technique for atoms trapped in optical lattices. It consists in modulating the lattice depth with a proper frequency sweeping. This filtering technique removes the most energetic atoms and provides, with the onset of thermalization, a cooling mechanism reminiscent of evaporative cooling. However, the selection is here performed in quasimomentum space rather than in position space. Interband selection rules are used to protect the population with a zero quasimomentum, namely the Bose Einstein condensate. Direct condensation of thermal atoms in an optical lattice is also achieved with this technique. It offers an interesting complementary cooling mechanism for quantum simulations performed with quantum gases trapped in optical lattices.