Nondestructive study of nonequilibrium states of cold trapped atoms

Abstract

Highly sensitive, nondestructive, real-time spectroscopic determination of the two-dimensional kinetic momentum distribution of a cold-atom sample is performed with the three-beam measurement of the recoil-induced resonances. The measurements performed with an operating magneto-optical trap reveal slow velocity drifts within a stationary atomic cloud and strong anisotropy and asymmetry of the non-Maxwellian momentum distribution. The developed method can be easily extended to three dimensions.