Ultrafast electron cooling in an expanding ultracold plasma

Tobias Kroker (), Mario Großmann, Klaus Sengstock, Markus Drescher, Philipp Wessels-Staarmann and Juliette Simonet
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Tobias Kroker: The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging
Mario Großmann: The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging
Klaus Sengstock: The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging
Markus Drescher: The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging
Philipp Wessels-Staarmann: The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging
Juliette Simonet: The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: 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 grants direct access to the electron temperature that relaxes from 5250 K to below 10 K in less than 500 ns.

Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-20815-8

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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-20815-8

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