Cold collisions between laser-cooled magnesium atoms

Light-assisted inelastic cold collisions are the main loss process for neut ral atoms trapped and laser cooled in magneto-optical traps. Alkaline earth atoms do not have hyperfine structure, which is expected to make the compa rison between theoretical predictions and experimental results much easier, compared to the case of alkali-metal atoms. We present here a numerical ca lculation for the loss rates in a weak laser field for cold magnesium atoms .