  We experimentally realize an enhanced Raman control scheme for neutral atoms
that features an intrinsic suppression of the two-photon carrier transition,
but retains the sidebands which couple to the external degrees of freedom of
the trapped atoms. This is achieved by trapping the atom at the node of a blue
detuned standing wave dipole trap, that acts as one field for the two-photon
Raman coupling. The improved ratio between cooling and heating processes in
this configuration enables a five times lower fundamental temperature limit for
resolved sideband cooling. We apply this method to perform Raman cooling to the
two-dimensional vibrational ground state and to coherently manipulate the
atomic motion. The presented scheme requires minimal additional resources and
can be applied to experiments with challenging optical access, as we
demonstrate by our implementation for atoms strongly coupled to an optical
cavity.
