Collisions between laser-cooled metastable xenon atoms in the presence
of laser fields provide a good experimental test for ultracold collis
ion theories as the observed ionization can be directly linked to the
atomic binary collisions. Hyperfine structure is not present for the e
ven isotopes Xe-132 and Xe-136, which simplifies the theoretical work.
We present our results and show how these and the results presented i
n Walhout et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett, 74, 605 (1995)] can be interpreted
with suitably adapted two-state models. Our approach suggests one poss
ibility why the strong shielding of collisions predicted by the simple
two-state model of Suominen et al. [Phys. Rev. A 51, 1446 (1995)] has
not been achieved in the xenon experiment.