Ultrafast electron cooling in an expanding ultracold plasma.

ABSTRACT: 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 number of atoms in a micrometer-sized volume of a ⁸⁷Rb Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by a single femtosecond laser pulse. The large density combined with the low temperature of the BEC give rise to an initially strongly coupled plasma in a so far unexplored regime bridging ultracold neutral plasma and ionized nanoclusters. Here, we report on ultrafast cooling of electrons, trapped on orbital trajectories in the long-range Coulomb potential of the dense ionic core, with a cooling rate of 400 K ps^-1. Furthermore, our experimental setup gr

SUBMITTER: Kroker T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7838291 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature