Related papers: Coupled rate-equation hydrodynamic simulation of a…
We report the sudden and spontaneous evolution of an initially correlated gas of repulsively interacting Rydberg atoms to an ultracold plasma. Under continuous laser coupling we create a Rydberg ensemble in the strong blockade regime, which…
Recent experiments have demonstrated the spontaneous evolution of a gas of ultracold Rydberg atoms into an expanding ultracold plasma, as well as the reverse process of plasma recombination into highly excited atomic states. Treating the…
Ultracold plasmas are a promising candidate for the creation of strongly-coupled Coulomb systems. Unfortunately, the values of the coupling parameter Gamma_e actually achieved after photoionization of the neutral atoms remain relatively…
Not long after metastable xenon was photoionized in a magneto-optical trap, groups in Europe and North America found that similar states of ionized gas evolved spontaneously from state-selected, high principal quantum number Rydberg gases.…
Double-resonant photoexcitation of nitric oxide in a molecular beam creates a dense ensemble of $50f(2)$ Rydberg states, which evolves to form a plasma of free electrons trapped in the potential well of an NO$^+$ spacecharge. The plasma…
Spontaneous avalanche to plasma splits the core of an ellipsoidal Rydberg gas of nitric oxide. Ambipolar expansion first quenches the electron temperature of this core plasma. Then, long-range, resonant charge transfer from ballistic ions…
We have experimentally demonstrated both heating and cooling of electrons in an ultracold neutral plasma (UNP) by embedding Rydberg atoms into the plasma soon after its creation. We have determined the relationship between the initial…
An ultra-cold molecular plasma with extraordinarily long lifetime (~0.5 ms) is generated under strong collisional cooling conditions in the expansion region of a seeded supersonic jet expansion close to the nozzle. A resonant two-photon…
We propose and analyze a new scheme to produce ultracold neutral plasmas deep in the strongly coupled regime. The method exploits the interaction blockade between cold atoms excited to high-lying Rydberg states and therefore does not…
A Rydberg gas of NO entrained in a supersonic molecular beam releases electrons as it evolves to form an ultracold plasma. The size of this signal, compared with that extracted by the subsequent application of a pulsed electric field,…
We report a systematic experimental and numerical study of the expansion of ultra-cold Rydberg plasmas. Specifically, we have measured the asymptotic expansion velocities, $v_0$, of ultra-cold neutral plasmas (UNPs) which evolve from cold,…
The double-resonant laser excitation of nitric oxide, cooled to 1 K in a seeded supersonic molecular beam, yields a gas of $\approx10^{12}$ molecules cm$^{-3}$ in a single selected Ryberg state. This population evolves to produce prompt…
We report the spontaneous formation of a plasma from a gas of cold Rydberg molecules. Double-resonant laser excitation promotes nitric oxide, cooled to 1 K in a seeded supersonic molecular beam, to single Rydberg states extending as deep as…
We perform a comprehensive investigation of the coupling between a Rydberg-dressed atomic gas and an ultra-cold plasma. Using simultaneous time-resolved measurements of both neutral atoms and ions, we show that plasma formation occurs via a…
We report on the behaviour of the ionization avalanche in an ensemble of ultracold 87Rb atoms coupled to a high lying Rydberg state and investigate extensions to the current model by including the effects of three-body recombination and…
In plasmas at very low temperatures formation of neutral atoms is dominated by collisional three-body recombination, owing to the strong ~ T^(-9/2) scaling of the corresponding recombination rate with the electron temperature T. While this…
A long life-time (>0.3 ms) strongly-coupled molecular Rydberg plasma is generated by the excitation of nitric oxide into the high-n Rydberg threshold region in the high-density region of a supersonic jet expansion. After 310 \mus the plasma…
We present a theoretical model of the ionization-recombination balance in the ultracold Rydberg gas-plasma mixture, which is caused by the collective processes rather than by individual interparticle interactions. This should be well…
We derive a quantum master equation for an atom coupled to a heat bath represented by a charged particle many-body environment. In Born-Markov approximation, the influence of the plasma environment on the reduced system is described by the…
Out-of-equilibrium, strong correlation in a many-body system triggers emergent properties that can act in important ways to constrain the natural dissipation of energy and matter. Networks of atoms, intricately engineered to arrange…