  We investigate experimentally the energy distribution of a single rubidium
atom trapped in a strongly focused dipole trap under various cooling regimes.
Using two different methods to measure the mean energy of the atom, we show
that the energy distribution of the radiatively cooled atom is close to
thermal. We then demonstrate how to reduce the energy of the single atom, first
by adiabatic cooling, and then by truncating the Boltzmann distribution of the
single atom. This provides a non-deterministic way to prepare atoms at low
microKelvin temperatures, close to the ground state of the trapping potential.
