Possibility of applying laser-cooling techniques to the observation of collective quantum effects

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Abstract
Obtaining ultracold atomic gases is now possible because of laser cooling, and it has been proposed to search for collective quantum effects in these gases. In this paper, I show that the observation of such effects seems unlikely in alkali-metal vapors, at least in a noncondensed phase. Finally, I discuss briefly the effects of radiative trapping and long-range resonance dipole interactions on laser cooling at high atomic densities, and I show that this phenomenon introduces severe limitations of the maximum attainable density, at least for the most elementary laser-cooling scheme.