Rapid heating of a strongly coupled plasma near the solid-liquid phase transition

Between 10(4) and 10(6) 9Be+ ions were trapped in a Penning trap and laser cooled to approximately 1 mK, where they formed a crystalline plasma. We measured the ion temperature as a function of time after turning off the laser cooling and observed a rapid temperature increase as the plasma underwent...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2005-01, Vol.94 (2), p.025001.1-025001.4, Article 025001
Main Authors: JENSEN, M. J, HASEGAWA, T, BOLLINGER, J. J, DUBIN, D. H. E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atomic and molecular physics
Atomic properties and interactions with photons
Basic studies of specific kinds of plasmas
Exact sciences and technology
Nonneutral plasmas
Optical cooling of atoms
trapping
Photon interactions with atoms
Physics
Physics of gases, plasmas and electric discharges
Physics of plasmas and electric discharges
Strongly-coupled plasmas
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Summary:Between 10(4) and 10(6) 9Be+ ions were trapped in a Penning trap and laser cooled to approximately 1 mK, where they formed a crystalline plasma. We measured the ion temperature as a function of time after turning off the laser cooling and observed a rapid temperature increase as the plasma underwent the solid-liquid phase transition at T approximately 10 mK (Gamma approximately 170). We present evidence that this rapid heating is due to a sudden release of energy from weakly cooled degrees of freedom involving the cyclotron motion of trapped impurity ions. This equilibration of cyclotron motion with motion parallel to the magnetic field is more than 10 orders of magnitude faster than that predicted by currently available theory, which is valid only in the absence of correlations (Gamma
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.025001