Feshbach Resonance Cooling of Trapped Atom Pairs

Spectroscopic studies of few-body systems at ultracold temperatures provide valuable information that often cannot be extracted in a hot environment. Considering a pair of atoms, we propose a cooling mechanism that makes use of a scattering Feshbach resonance. Application of a series of time-dependent magnetic field ramps results in the situation in which either zero, one, or two atoms remain trapped. If two atoms remain in the trap after the field ramps are completed, then they have been cooled. Application of the proposed cooling mechanism to optical traps or lattices is considered.