Heating Rates and Enhanced Equilibration Rates with Strongly Correlated Ions in a Penning-Malmberg Trap

Published

June 25, 2006

Author(s)

John J. Bollinger, Marie J. Jensen, T Hasegawa, D H. Dubin

Abstract

We laser cool up to 10⁶⁹Be⁺ ions to ~ 1 mK in a Penning-Malmberg trap and measure the ion temperature as a function of time after turning off the cooling laser. We observe a rapid heating of the ions when the their temperature in a direction parallel to the magnetic field increases above 10 mK and show that this is due to the equilibration of a warm (~ few Kelvin) impurity-ion cyclotron motion with the parallel motion of the ⁹Be⁺ ions. The observed equilibration is more than 14 orders of magnitude faster than that predicted by theory which is valid in the absence of correlations, and is closely related to the enhancement of nuclear reactions in dense stellar interiors, first predicted over 50 years ago by Salpeter. Finally we describe an attempt to use the measured heating rate of the ⁹Be⁺ ions to observe the latent heat of the predicted solid-liquid phase transition.

Proceedings Title

Non-Neutral Plasma Physics VI: Proceedings of the Workshop on Non-Neutral Plasmas,

Conference Location

Aarhus,

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

cyclotron equilibration rate, laser cooling, latent heat, non-neutral plasma, one component plasma, Penning trap, strongly correlated plasma

Citation

Bollinger, J. , Jensen, M. , Hasegawa, T. and Dubin, D. (2006), Heating Rates and Enhanced Equilibration Rates with Strongly Correlated Ions in a Penning-Malmberg Trap, Non-Neutral Plasma Physics VI: Proceedings of the Workshop on Non-Neutral Plasmas,, Aarhus, , [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=50410 (Accessed October 16, 2025)