Towards a measurement of the Debye length in very large Magneto-Optical traps

We propose different experimental methods to measure the analog of the Debye length in a very large Magneto-Optical Trap, which should characterize the spatial correlations in the atomic cloud. An analytical, numerical and experimental study of the response of the atomic cloud to an external modulation potential suggests that this Debye length, if it exists, is significantly larger than what was expected.