Many-body collision contributions to electron momentum damping rates in a plasma influenced by electron strong coupling
arXiv:1910.01707 · doi:10.1063/1.5129383
Abstract
Experimental studies of electron-ion collision rates in an ultracold neutral plasma (UNP) can be conducted through measuring the rate of electron plasma oscillation damping. For sufficiently cold and dense conditions where strong coupling influences are important, the measured damping rate was faster by 37\% than theoretical expectations [W. Chen, C. Witte, and J. Roberts, Phys. Rev. E \textbf{96}, 013203 (2017)]. We have conducted a series of numerical simulations to isolate the primary source of this difference. By analyzing the distribution of electron velocity changes due to collisions in a molecular dynamics simulation, examining the trajectory of electrons with high deflection angle in such simulations, and examining the oscillation damping rate while varying the ratio of two-body to three-body electron-ion collision rates, we have found that the difference is consistent with the effect due to many-body collisions leading to bound electrons. This has implications for other electron-ion collision related transport properties in addition to electron oscillation damping.
The following article has been submitted to Physics of Plasmas on Oct.01.2019
References in corpus (4)
- Evolution from a molecular Rydberg gas to an ultracold plasma in a seeded supersonic expansion of NO
- Using Three-Body Recombination to Extract Electron Temperatures of Ultracold Plasmas
- Velocity Relaxation in a Strongly Coupled Plasma
- Extending plasma transport theory to strong coupling through the concept of an effective interaction potential