Cooling fermionic atoms in optical lattices by shaping the confinement

We propose an experimental procedure to cool fermionic atoms loaded into an optical lattice. The central idea is to spatially divide the system into entropy-rich and -poor regions by shaping the confining potential profile. Atoms in regions of high entropy per particle are subsequently isolated from the system. We discuss how to experimentally carry out this proposal and perform a quantitative study of its efficiency. We find that the entropy per particle, s, can typically be reduced by a factor of 10 such that entropies lower than s/k₁0. 2 can be reached. Cooling into highly sought-after quantum phases (such as an antiferromagnet) can thus be achieved. We show that this procedure is robust against variations of the experimental conditions.