Rydberg atom formation in strongly correlated ultracold plasmas

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 law is well established at high temperatures, the unphysical...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2011-09
Main Authors: Bannasch, G, Pohl, T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Divergence
Electron energy
Electron-ion recombination
Genetic recombination
Ion recombination
Molecular dynamics
Monte Carlo simulation
Neutral atoms
Plasmas (physics)
Temperature
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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 law is well established at high temperatures, the unphysical divergence as T -> 0 clearly suggest a breakdown in the low-temperature regime. Here, we present a combined molecular dynamics-Monte-Carlo study of electron-ion recombination over a wide range of temperatures and densities. Our results reproduce the known behavior of the recombination rate at high temperatures, but reveal significant deviations with decreasing temperature. We discuss the fate of the kinetic bottleneck and resolve the divergence-problem as the plasma enters the ultracold, strongly coupled domain.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1109.6456