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Sisyphus cooling

Sisyphus cooling noun: the use of specially selected laser light, hitting atoms from various angles to both cool and trap them in a potential well, effectively rolling the atoms down a hill of potential energy until they have lost their kinetic energy.

Noun

Sisyphus cooling (uncountable)

  1. The use of specially selected laser light, hitting atoms from various angles to both cool and trap them in a potential well, effectively rolling the atoms down a hill of potential energy until they have lost their kinetic energy.

Origin of Sisyphus cooling

Named after Sisyphus from Greek mythology, who was doomed eternally to roll a stone up a mountain, only to have it roll down again whenever he got it near the summit.

Questions about Sisyphus cooling

What does Sisyphus cooling mean?
Sisyphus cooling means the use of specially selected laser light, hitting atoms from various angles to both cool and trap them in a potential well, effectively rolling the atoms down a hill of potential energy until they have lost their kinetic energy.
What part of speech is Sisyphus cooling?
Sisyphus cooling is a noun.

Words near Sisyphus cooling in the dictionary

  1. Sisyphean labours
  2. Sisyphian
  3. sisyphic
  4. Sisyphism
  5. Sisyphus
  6. Sisyphus cooling
  7. Sisyphus effect
  8. Sisyphus effects
  9. Sisyphusean
  10. sisyrid
  11. sisyrids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Sisyphus cooling (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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