Entropy exchange in laser cooling

It is usually presumed that spontaneous emission is necessary to remove the entropy lost by laser-cooled atoms. Here we show that the changes in the laser beams themselves constitute a sufficiently large reservoir of N states accessible to the system that their entropy S=k_Bln(N) is sufficient to absorb the entropy lost by the atoms in the cooling process. Proper choice of laser parameters could possibly produce cooling of atoms or molecules over a wide range of temperatures without spontaneous emission.