We present a detailed experimental study of the velocity distribution of atoms cooled in an optical lattice. Our results are supported by full-quantum numerical simulations. Even though the Sisyphus effect, the responsible cooling mechanism, has been used extensively in many cold atom experiments, no detailed study of the velocity distribution has been reported previously. For the experimental as well as for the numerical investigation, it turns out that a Gaussian function is not the one that best reproduce the data for all parameters. We also fit the data to alternative functions, such as Lorentzians, Tsallis functions and double Gaussians. In particular, a double Gaussian provides a more precise fitting to our results.

We present a setup where we trap two different cesium hyperfine ground states in two different near-resonant optical lattices with identical topographies. We demonstrate that we can change the relative spatial phase between the lattices and we measure the equilibrium temperature as a function of the relative spatial phase. This provides a topographical chart of the optical potential. We also determine the rate at which atoms are transferred between the lattices and show that the setup is a promising candidate for implementing coherent quantum state manipulation.

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