Ultracold Neutral Plasmas

Abstract

Ultracold neutral plasmas are formed by photoionizing laser-cooled atoms near the ionization threshold. Through the application of atomic physics techniques and diagnostics, these experiments stretch the boundaries of traditional neutral plasma physics. The electron temperature in these plasmas ranges from 1-1000 K and the ion temperature is around 1 K. The density can approach $10^{11}$ cm${}^{-3}$. Fundamental interest stems from the possibility of creating strongly-coupled plasmas, but recombination, collective modes, and thermalization in these systems have also been studied. Optical absorption images of a strontium plasma, using the Sr${}^{+}$ ${}^{2}S\_1/2->{}^{2}P\_1/2$ transition at 422 nm, depict the density profile of the plasma, and probe kinetics on a 50 ns time-scale. The Doppler-broadened ion absorption spectrum measures the ion velocity distribution, which gives an accurate measure of the ion dynamics in the first microsecond after photoionization.

12th International Congress on Plasma Physics, 25-29 October 2004, Nice (France)

References in corpus (6)

• 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
• On the possibility of "correlation cooling" of ultracold neutral plasmas
• Absorption Imaging and Spectroscopy of Ultracold Neutral Plasmas

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Ultrafast creation of overlapping Rydberg electrons in an atomic BEC and Mott-insulator lattice