2003/10/02 by Clayton Simien, C. E. Simien, Y. C. Chen +9 · 162 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Absorption (acoustics) #Absorption spectroscopy #Atomic and Molecular Physics #Atomic physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena #Electron #Ion #Kinetic energy #Materials science #Microsecond #Nuclear physics #Optics #Physics #Plasma #physics.atom-ph #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.92.143001
published in Physical Review Letters 92(14), 143001 (American Physical Society) · 4 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2003/10/02 · openalex publication_date 2004/04/06 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We report optical absorption imaging of ultracold neutral strontium plasmas. The ion absorption spectrum determined from the images is Doppler broadened and thus provides a quantitative measure of the ion kinetic energy. For the particular plasma conditions studied, ions heat rapidly as they equilibrate during the first 250 ns after plasma formation. Equilibration leaves ions on the border between the weakly coupled gaseous and strongly coupled liquid states. On a longer time scale of microseconds, pressure exerted by the trapped electron gas accelerates the ions radially.