Measurement of the absolute total electron impact cross section on Cs atoms using a magnetooptical trap

Laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms has been employed for the measurement of the total electron impact cross sections of the ground state 62 S 1/2 of 133Cs atoms in the energy range from 80 to 500 eV. The total electron impact cross sections of the cold Cs atoms in the MOT were measured by observing the decay of the MOT after the interaction with the electron beam, and were found to depend only on the electron flux and not on the total number of atoms in the MOT. We confirm and extend the existing data on these measurements.