In contrast, gray molasses only has one sinusoidally light-shifted ground state; optical pumping at the peaks of this potential energy landscape takes atoms to the dark state, which can selectively evolve to the bright state and re-enter the cycle with sufficient momentum. Sisyphus cooling is difficult to implement when the excited state manifold is poorly-resolved (i.e. whose hyperfine spacing is comparable to or less than the constituent linewidths); in these atomic species, the Raman-type gray molasses is preferable.