Abel inversion for study of multiple scattering in a Cs magneto-optical trap*

We present a study of multiple scattering within a Cs magneto- optical trap (MOT). We employed two Abel inversion algorithms to recover the density distribution of the MOT from fluorescent images. The method is non-destructive and provides accurate measurement of MOT density. We observe deviations of the density distribution from a Gaussian that are attributed to the multiple scattering of photons.