Ultracold Plasma Expansion in a Magnetic Field

Abstract

We measure the expansion of an ultracold plasma across the field lines of a uniform magnetic field. We image the ion distribution by extracting the ions with a high voltage pulse onto a position-sensitive detector. Early in the lifetime of the plasma ($<20$ $\mu$s), the size of the image is dominated by the time-of-flight Coulomb explosion of the dense ion cloud. For later times, we measure the 2-D Gaussian width of the ion image, obtaining the transverse expansion velocity as a function of magnetic field (up to 70 G). We observe that the expansion velocity scales as B${}^{-1/2}$, explained by a nonlinear ambipolar diffusion model with anisotropic diffusion in two different directions.

4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PRL

References in corpus (10)

• 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
• Coulomb crystallization in expanding laser-cooled neutral plasmas
• Evolution of Ultracold, Neutral Plasmas
• Fluorescence measurements of expanding strongly-coupled neutral plasmas
• Electron Temperature of Ultracold Plasmas
• Using Three-Body Recombination to Extract Electron Temperatures of Ultracold Plasmas
• Electron Temperature Evolution in Expanding Ultracold Neutral Plasmas
• Neutral Plasma Oscillations at Zero Temperature

Cited by in corpus (19)

• Observation of an ultracold plasma instability
• The limit of strong ion coupling due to electron shielding
• Transport Regimes Spanning Magnetization-Coupling Phase Space
• A Generalized Boltzmann Kinetic Theory for Strongly Magnetized Plasmas with Application to Friction
• Density-Dependent Response of an Ultracold Plasma to Few-Cycle Radio-Frequency Pulses
• High Resolution Ionization of Ultracold Neutral Plasmas
• Temperature Anisotropy Relaxation of the One-Component Plasma
• Reduction of electron heating by magnetizing ultracold neutral plasma
• Transverse Force Induced by a Magnetized Wake
• Electron Evaporation from an Ultracold Plasma in a Uniform Electric Field
• Measurement and simulation of laser-induced fluorescence from non-equilibrium ultracold neutral plasmas
• Viscosity of the magnetized strongly coupled one-component plasma
• Finite-amplitude RF heating rates for magnetized electrons in neutral plasma
• A Kinetic Model of Friction in Strongly Coupled Strongly Magnetized Plasmas
• dc electrical conductivity in strongly magnetized plasmas
• Interaction of ultracold non-ideal ion-electron plasma with a uniform magnetic field
• What is the temperature of an ultra-cold Rydberg plasma?
• Expansion of an ultracold Rydberg plasma
• Magnetic Confinement of an Ultracold Neutral Plasma