Abstract

Three-body recombination, an important collisional process in plasmas, increases dramatically at low electron temperatures, with an accepted scaling of T-e(-9/2). We measure three-body recombination in an ultracold neutral xenon plasma by detecting recombination-created Rydberg atoms using a microwave-ionization technique. With the accepted theory (expected to be applicable for weakly coupled plasmas) and our measured rates, we extract the plasma temperatures, which are in reasonable agreement with previous measurements early in the plasma lifetime. The resulting electron temperatures indicate that the plasma continues to cool to temperatures below 1 K.

Publication Details
Publication Type
Journal Article
Year of Publication
2007
Volume
99
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.145001
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Contributors