ترغب بنشر مسار تعليمي؟ اضغط هنا

Strong-coupling effects in the relaxation dynamics of ultracold neutral plasmas

84   0   0.0 ( 0 )
 نشر من قبل T. Pohl
 تاريخ النشر 2005
  مجال البحث فيزياء
والبحث باللغة English




اسأل ChatGPT حول البحث

We describe a hybrid molecular dynamics approach for the description of ultracold neutral plasmas, based on an adiabatic treatment of the electron gas and a full molecular dynamics simulation of the ions, which allows us to follow the long-time evolution of the plasma including the effect of the strongly coupled ion motion. The plasma shows a rather complex relaxation behavior, connected with temporal as well as spatial oscillations of the ion temperature. Furthermore, additional laser cooling of the ions during the plasma evolution drastically modifies the expansion dynamics, so that crystallization of the ion component can occur in this nonequilibrium system, leading to lattice-like structures or even long-range order resulting in concentric shells.



قيم البحث

اقرأ أيضاً

91 - T. Pohl , T. Pattard , J.M. Rost 2005
We investigate the strongly correlated ion dynamics and the degree of coupling achievable in the evolution of freely expanding ultracold neutral plasmas. We demonstrate that the ionic Coulomb coupling parameter $Gamma_{rm i}$ increases considerably i n later stages of the expansion, reaching the strongly coupled regime despite the well-known initial drop of $Gamma_{rm i}$ to order unity due to disorder-induced heating. Furthermore, we formulate a suitable measure of correlation and show th at $Gamma_{rm i}$ calculated from the ionic temperature and density reflects the degree of order in the system if it is sufficiently close to a quasisteady state. At later times, however, the expansion of the plasma cloud becomes faster than the relaxation of correlations, and the system does not reach thermodynamic equilibrium anymore.
127 - J. Castro , P. McQuillen , 2010
We photoionize laser-cooled atoms with a laser beam possessing spatially periodic intensity modulations to create ultracold neutral plasmas with controlled density perturbations. Laser-induced fluorescence imaging reveals that the density perturbatio ns oscillate in space and time, and the dispersion relation of the oscillations matches that of ion acoustic waves, which are long-wavelength, electrostatic, density waves.
271 - T. Pohl , T. Pattard , J.M. Rost 2004
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 system evolutio n. We show that electron-ion collisions in laser-cooled plasmas influence the ionic temperature, decreasing the degree of correlation obtainable in such systems. However, taking into account the collisions increases the ion temperature much less than what would be estimated based on static plasma clouds neglecting the plasma expansion. The latter leads to both adiabatic cooling of the ions as well as, more importantly, a rapid decrease of the collisional heating rate.
Ultracold neutral plasmas, formed by photoionizing laser-cooled atoms near the ionization threshold, have electron temperatures in the 1-1000 kelvin range and ion temperatures from tens of millikelvin to a few kelvin. They represent a new frontier in the study of neutral plasmas, which traditionally deals with much hotter systems, but they also blur the boundaries of plasma, atomic, condensed matter, and low temperature physics. Modelling these plasmas challenges computational techniques and theories of non-equilibrium systems, so the field has attracted great interest from the theoretical and computational physics communities. By varying laser intensities and wavelengths it is possible to accurately set the initial plasma density and energy, and charged-particle-detection and optical diagnostics allow precise measurements for comparison with theoretical predictions. Recent experiments using optical probes demonstrated that ions in the plasma equilibrate in a strongly coupled fluid phase. Strongly coupled plasmas, in which the electrical interaction energy between charged particles exceeds the average kinetic energy, reverse the traditional energy hierarchy underlying basic plasma concepts such as Debye screening and hydrodynamics. Equilibration in this regime is of particular interest because it involves the establishment of spatial correlations between particles, and it connects to the physics of the interiors of gas-giant planets and inertial confinement fusion devices.
Ultracold plasmas (UCP) provide a well-controlled system for studying multiple aspects in plasma physics that include collisions and strong coupling effects. By applying a short electric field pulse to a UCP, a plasma electron center-of-mass (CM) osc illation can be initiated. In accessible parameter ranges, the damping rate of this oscillation is determined by the electron-ion collision rate. We performed measurements of the oscillation damping rate with such parameters and compared the measured rates to both a molecular dynamic (MD) simulation that includes strong coupling effects and to Monte-Carlo collisional operator simulation designed to predict the damping rate including only weak coupling considerations. We found agreement between experimentally measured damping rate and the MD result. This agreement did require including the influence of a previously unreported UCP heating mechanism whereby the presence of a DC electric field during ionization increased the electron temperature, but estimations and simulations indicate that such a heating mechanism should be present for our parameters. The measured damping rate at our coldest electron temperature conditions was much faster than the weak coupling prediction obtained from the Monte-Carlo operator simulation, which indicates the presence of significant strong coupling influence. The density averaged electron strong coupling parameter $Gamma$ measured at our coldest electron temperature conditions was 0.35.
التعليقات
جاري جلب التعليقات جاري جلب التعليقات
سجل دخول لتتمكن من متابعة معايير البحث التي قمت باختيارها
mircosoft-partner

هل ترغب بارسال اشعارات عن اخر التحديثات في شمرا-اكاديميا