We report on sim ultaneous sub-D oppler laser cooling o f ferm ionic 6Li and 40K using the D\ optical transitions.We com pare experim ental results to a num erical sim ulation o f the cooling process applying a sem iclassical M onte C arlo w ave-function m ethod. T he sim ulation takes into account the three-dim ensional optical m olasses setup and the dipole interaction betw een atom s and the bichrom atic light field driving the D\ transitions. W e discuss the physical m echanism s at play, identify the im portant role o f coherences betw een the ground-state hyperfine levels, and com pare D\ and D2 sub-D oppler cooling. In 5 m s, the D , m olasses phase greatly reduces the tem perature for b oth 6Li and 40K at the sam e tim e, w ith final tem peratures o f 44 and 11 /xK, respectively. F or both species this leads to a phase-space density close to 10-4 . T hese conditions are w ell suited to direct loading o f an optical or m agnetic trap for efficient evaporative cooling to quantum degeneracy.

We derive an effective ring model in momentum space for trapped bosons with synthetic spin-orbit coupling. This effective model is characterized by a peculiar form of the inter particle interactions, which is crucially modified by the external confinement. The ring model allows for an intuitive understanding of the phase diagram of trapped condensates with isotropic spin-orbit coupling, and in particular for the existence of skyrmion lattice phases. The model, which may be generally applied for spinor condensates of arbitrary spin and spin-dependent interactions, is illustrated for the particular cases of spin-1/2 and spin-1 condensates.