Related papers: Electron Temperature Relaxation in the Clusterized…
Starting from the beginning of their research in the early 2000's, the ultracold plasmas were considered as a promising tool to achieve considerable values of the Coulomb coupling parameter for electrons. Unfortunately, this was found to be…
We have studied the behavior of cold Rydberg atoms embedded in an ultracold plasma. We demonstrate that even deeply bound Rydberg atoms are completely ionized in such an environment, due to electron collisions. Using a fast pulse extraction…
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…
Plasma dynamics critically depends on density and temperature, thus well-controlled experimental realizations are essential benchmarks for theoretical models. The formation of an ultracold plasma can be triggered by ionizing a tunable…
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…
We have used the free expansion of ultracold neutral plasmas as a time-resolved probe of electron temperature. A combination of experimental measurements of the ion expansion velocity and numerical simulations characterize the crossover…
We study the evolution of ultracold plasmas by measuring the electron temperature. Shortly after plasma formation, competition between heating and cooling mechanisms drives the electron temperature to a value within a narrow range…
We have measured the asymptotic expansion velocities of ultra-cold plasmas (UNPs) which evolve from cold, dense, samples of Rydberg rubidium atoms using ion time-of-flight spectroscopy. From this, we have obtained values for the initial…
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…
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…
An ellipsoidal volume of Rydberg molecules, entrained in a supersonic molecular beam, evolves on a nanosecond timescale to form a strongly coupled ultracold plasma. We present coupled rate-equation simulations that model the underlying…
Ultracold neutral plasmas provide a useful system for studying extreme parameter regimes plasma physics in an accessible laboratory setting. The parameter space of plasma physics can be characterized in part by coupling strength and degree…
Three-body recombination, an important collisional process in plasmas, increases dramatically at low electron temperatures, with an accepted scaling of T_e^-9/2. We measure three-body recombination in an ultracold neutral xenon plasma by…
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…
When ultracold plasma is generated using photonization of laser cooled atoms, some atoms reach only upto Rydberg states. These in turn interact with the free electrons of the plasma and get ionized further. We study the interaction of…
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…
In moderately-coupled plasmas, a significant fraction of the internal energy resides in electric fields. As these plasmas are heated or compressed, the shifting partition of energy between particles and fields leads to surprising effects,…
While ion heating by elastic electron-ion collisions may be neglected for a description of the evolution of freely expanding ultracold neutral plasmas, the situation is different in scenarios where the ions are laser-cooled during the…
A theoretical interpretation of the recent experimental studies of temperature evolution in the course of time in the freely-expanding ultracold plasma bunches, released from a magneto-optical trap, is discussed. The most interesting result…
Heating of charged particles via collisionless shocks, while ubiquitous in the universe, is an intriguing yet puzzling plasma phenomenon. One outstanding question is how electrons and ions approach an equilibrium after they were heated to…