2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/99477We have experimentally explored a novel possibility to study exoergic cold atomic collisions. Trapping of small countable atom numbers in a shallow magneto-optical trap and monitoring of their temporal dynamics allows us to directly observe isolated two-body atomic collisions and provides detailed information on loss statistics. A substantial fraction of such cold collisional events has been found to result in the loss of one atom only. We have also observed for the first time a strong optical suppression of ground-state hyperfine-changing collisions in the trap by its repump laser field.LaTeX 2e, 5 pages, 4 Postscript figuresQuantum Physicstext