Using Three-Body Recombination to Extract Electron Temperatures of Ultracold Plasmas

Abstract

Three-body recombination, an important collisional process in plasmas, increases dramatically at low electron temperatures, with an accepted scaling of T_e^-9/2. We measure three-body recombination in an ultracold neutral xenon plasma by detecting recombination-created Rydberg atoms using a microwave-ionization technique. With the accepted theory (expected to be applicable for weakly-coupled plasmas) and our measured rates we extract the plasma temperatures, which are in reasonable agreement with previous measurements early in the plasma lifetime. The resulting electron temperatures indicate that the plasma continues to cool to temperatures below 1 K.

5 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Creation of an Ultracold Neutral Plasma
• Plasma Oscillations and Expansion of an Ultracold Neutral Plasma
• Using Absorption Imaging to Study Ion Dynamics in an Ultracold Neutral Plasma
• Kinetic modelling and molecular dynamics simulation of ultracold neutral plasmas including ionic correlations
• Fluorescence measurements of expanding strongly-coupled neutral plasmas
• Electron Temperature of Ultracold Plasmas
• Neutral Plasma Oscillations at Zero Temperature

Cited by in corpus (34)

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• Spontaneous avalanche ionization of a strongly blockaded Rydberg gas
• Velocity Relaxation in a Strongly Coupled Plasma
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• Strongly Coupled Plasmas via Rydberg-Blockade of Cold Atoms
• Ultracold Plasma Expansion in a Magnetic Field
• Observation of an ultracold plasma instability
• The limit of strong ion coupling due to electron shielding
• Rydberg atom formation in strongly correlated ultracold plasmas
• Three-body recombination in physical chemistry
• Ion Temperature Evolution in an Ultracold Neutral Plasma
• The very slow expansion of an ultracold plasma formed in a seeded supersonic molecular beam of NO
• Recombination fluorescence in ultracold neutral plasmas
• Ultrafast Electron Cooling in an Expanding Ultracold Plasma
• Thermodynamic State Variables in Quasi-Equilibrium Ultracold Neutral Plasma
• High Resolution Ionization of Ultracold Neutral Plasmas
• Strong spin-exchange recombination of three weakly interacting ${}^7$Li atoms
• Ion friction at small values of the Coulomb logarithm
• Reduction of electron heating by magnetizing ultracold neutral plasma
• Ion-atom-atom three-body recombination: from the cold to the thermal regime
• Influence of Electron Evaporative Cooling on Ultracold Plasma Expansion
• Electron Evaporation from an Ultracold Plasma in a Uniform Electric Field
• Heating and cooling of electrons in an ultracold neutral plasma using Rydberg atoms
• On the Specific Features of Temperature Evolution in Ultracold Plasmas
• Creating Non-Maxwellian Velocity Distributions in Ultracold Plasmas
• Ultracold Plasma Expansion as a Function of Charge Neutrality
• The role of collisions and strong coupling in ultracold plasmas
• Microwave Diagnostics of Ultracold Neutral Plasma
• What is the temperature of an ultra-cold Rydberg plasma?
• Expansion of an ultracold Rydberg plasma
• Electron trapping in freely expanding ultracold neutral plasmas
• Many-body collision contributions to electron momentum damping rates in a plasma influenced by electron strong coupling
• The Effect of Magnetization on Electron Heating in Low-Density Ultracold Neutral Plasmas
• Evaluation of Charged Particle Evaporation Expressions in Ultracold Plasmas