Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

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

Published

Author(s)

M J. Jensen, T Hasegawa, John Bollinger, Daniel H. Dubin

Abstract

Between 104 and 10u6 A9Be^+ ions were trapped in a Penning trap and laser-cooled to siml K, 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 undergoes the solid-liquid phase transition at T=10-mK Gamma sim). 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.
Citation
Physical Review Letters
Volume
94

Keywords

laser cooling, Penning trap, phase transition, strongly coupled plasma

Citation

Jensen, M. , Hasegawa, T. , Bollinger, J. and Dubin, D. (2005), Rapid heating of a strongly coupled plasma at the solid-liquid phase transition, Physical Review Letters (Accessed December 12, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created January 20, 2005, Updated October 12, 2021