Skip to content

Counting Cold Collisions

B. Ueberholz, S. Kuhr, D. Frese, D. Meschede, V. Gomer

quant-pharXiv:quant-ph/9910120

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.

Create a lesson