  Continuous wave (CW) lasers are the enabling technology for producing
ultracold atoms and molecules through laser cooling and trapping. The resulting
pristine samples of slow moving particles are the de facto starting point for
both fundamental and applied science when a highly-controlled quantum system is
required. Laser cooled atoms have recently led to major advances in quantum
information, the search to understand dark energy, quantum chemistry, and
quantum sensors. However, CW laser technology currently limits laser cooling
and trapping to special types of elements that do not include highly abundant
and chemically relevant atoms such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Here, we demonstrate that Doppler cooling and trapping by optical frequency
combs may provide a route to trapped, ultracold atoms whose spectra are not
amenable to CW lasers. We laser cool a gas of atoms by driving a two-photon
transition with an optical frequency comb, an efficient process to which every
comb tooth coherently contributes. We extend this technique to create a
magneto-optical trap (MOT), an electromagnetic beaker for accumulating the
laser-cooled atoms for further study. Our results suggest that the efficient
frequency conversion offered by optical frequency combs could provide a key
ingredient for producing trapped, ultracold samples of nature's most abundant
building blocks, as well as antihydrogen. As such, the techniques demonstrated
here may enable advances in fields as disparate as molecular biology and the
search for physics beyond the standard model.
