Absorption Imaging and Spectroscopy of Ultracold Neutral Plasmas

Abstract

Absorption imaging and spectroscopy can probe the dynamics of an ultracold neutral plasma during the first few microseconds after its creation. Quantitative analysis of the data, however, is complicated by the inhomogeneous density distribution, expansion of the plasma, and possible lack of global thermal equilibrium for the ions. In this article we describe methods for addressing these issues. Using simple assumptions about the underlying temperature distribution and ion motion, the Doppler-broadened absorption spectrum obtained from plasma images can be related to the average temperature in the plasma.

arXiv comment14 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (8)

• 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
• Magnetic trapping of metastable ${}^3{P}_2$ atomic strontium
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• Short time dynamics with initial correlations

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Ultracold Neutral Plasmas
• Ultracold Plasma Expansion as a Function of Charge Neutrality
• Ultracold Neutral Plasmas
• Evaluation of Charged Particle Evaporation Expressions in Ultracold Plasmas
• Propagation of radiation pulses through gas-plasma mixtures