Towards a measurement of the Debye length in very large magneto-optical traps

摘要

We propose different experimental methods to measure the analog of the Debye length in a very largemagnetooptical trap, which should characterize the spatial correlations in the atomic cloud. An analytical, numerical, and experimental study of the response of the atomic cloud to an external modulation potential suggests that this Debye length, if it exists, is significantly larger than what was expected.