arXiv · quant-ph/9910120
Counting Cold Collisions
Abstract
We have experimentally explored a novel possibility to study exoergic cold atomic collisions. Trapping of small countable atom numbers in a shallow magneto-optical trap and monitoring of their temporal dynamics allows us to directly observe isolated two-body atomic collisions and provides detailed information on loss statistics. A substantial fraction of such cold collisional events has been found to result in the loss of one atom only. We have also observed for the first time a strong optical suppression of ground-state hyperfine-changing collisions in the trap by its repump laser field.
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B. Ueberholz, S. Kuhr, D. Frese, D. Meschede, V. Gomer. 1999-12-08. Counting Cold Collisions. https://doi.org/10.1088/0953-4075/33/4/105
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