Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2005.14009 · Nature Communications

Ultrafast electron cooling in an expanding ultracold plasma

Tobias Kroker, Mario Großmann, K. Sengstock, Markus Drescher, Philipp Wessels, Juliette Simonet

Published Jan 26, 2021• 25 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Plasma dynamics critically depends on density and temperature, thus well-controlled experimental realizations are essential benchmarks for theoretical models. The formation of an ultracold plasma can be triggered by ionizing a tunable number of atoms in a micrometer-sized volume of a 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by a single femtosecond laser pulse. The large density combined with the low temperature of the BEC give rise to an initially strongly coupled plasma in a so far unexplored regime bridging ultracold neutral plasma and ionized nanoclusters. Here, we report on ultrafast cooling of electrons, trapped on orbital trajectories in the long-range Coulomb potential of the dense ionic core, with a cooling rate of 400 K ps−1. Furthermore, our experimental setup grants direct access to the electron temperature that relaxes from 5250 K to below 10 K in less than 500 ns.

DOI
10.1038/s41467-020-20815-8

Related papers

Ultrafast Electron Cooling in an Expanding Ultracold Plasma

Tobias Kroker, Mario Großmann, K. Sengstock +3 more

We report on ultrafast cooling of electrons in an initially strongly coupled ultracold plasma, created by ionization of a Bose-Einstein condensate using a femtosecond laser pulse. Our experiment grants direct access to the electron temperature.

International Conference on Ultrafast Phenomena•Jan 1, 2020•0 citations

Ultrafast many-body dynamics of dense Rydberg gases and ultracold plasma

Mario Großmann, Jette Heyer, Julian Fiedler +4 more

Abstract Understanding Coulomb driven many-body dynamics in ultracold atomic systems far from equilibrium remains an open challenge, particularly when ultrafast excitation channels create competing pathways toward Rydberg gases or ultracold plasmas. Here, we investigate the many-body dynamics in a 87 Rb Bose-Einstein condensate after exposure to a single femtosecond laser pulse. By tuning the laser wavelength across the two-photon ionization threshold, we can control the initial state that is either dominated by free electrons and leads to an ultracold plasma or dominated by electrons in excited states which leads to a dense Rydberg gas. The large bandwidth enables overcoming the Rydberg blockade that limits the excitation density for narrow-linewidth lasers. We directly measure the kinetic energy of the released electrons and compare the final distribution of free, bound and plasma electrons to molecular dynamics simulations where the electrons are modeled as individual particles including collisional ionization and recombination processes. We find very good agreement between the simulated electron distribution and the experimental observation. We identify charge imbalance as main driver for the decay of a dense Rydberg gas into an ultracold plasma.

arXiv:2510.26319•Communications Physics•May 14, 2026•0 citations

Ultracold neutral plasmas

Mary Lyon, S. L. Rolston

By photoionizing samples of laser-cooled atoms with laser light tuned just above the ionization limit, plasmas can be created with electron and ion temperatures below 10 K. These ultracold neutral plasmas have extended the temperature bounds of plasma physics by two orders of magnitude. Table-top experiments, using many of the tools from atomic physics, allow for the study of plasma phenomena in this new regime with independent control over the density and temperature of the plasma through the excitation process. Characteristic of these systems is an inhomogeneous density profile, inherited from the density distribution of the laser-cooled neutral atom sample. Most work has dealt with unconfined plasmas in vacuum, which expand outward at velocities of order 100 m/s, governed by electron pressure, and with lifetimes of order 100 μs, limited by stray electric fields. Using detection of charged particles and optical detection techniques, a wide variety of properties and phenomena have been observed, including expansion dynamics, collective excitations in both the electrons and ions, and collisional properties. Through three-body recombination collisions, the plasmas rapidly form Rydberg atoms, and clouds of cold Rydberg atoms have been observed to spontaneously avalanche ionize to form plasmas. Of particular interest is the possibility of the formation of strongly coupled plasmas, where Coulomb forces dominate thermal motion and correlations become important. The strongest impediment to strong coupling is disorder-induced heating, a process in which Coulomb energy from an initially disordered sample is converted into thermal energy. This restricts electrons to a weakly coupled regime and leaves the ions barely within the strongly coupled regime. This review will give an overview of the field of ultracold neutral plasmas, from its inception in 1999 to current work, including efforts to increase strong coupling and effects on plasma properties due to strong coupling.

Reports on Progress in Physics•Nov 17, 2016•77 citations

Towards Stronger Coulomb Coupling in an Ultracold Neutral Plasma

Mary Lyon

Ultracold neutral plasmas are created by photoionizing laser-cooled atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Due to their large electrical potential energies and comparatively small kinetic energies, ultracold plasmas fall into a regime of plasma systems which are called “strongly coupled.” A priority in the field of ultracold plasmas is to generate plasmas with higher values of the strong coupling parameter Γ, which is given as the ratio of the nearest-neighbor Coulomb potential energy to the average kinetic energy. The equilibrium strong coupling in ultracold plasmas is limited by the ultrafast relaxation of the ions due to spatial disorder in the initial system. This heating mechanism is called “disorder-induced heating” (DIH) and it limits the ion strong coupling in ultracold plasmas to order unity. This thesis describes experiments that explore ways to generate higher values of the strong coupling parameter in an ultracold neutral calcium plasma.One way to increase Γ is to mitigate the effects of DIH using electron screening. This thesis describes an experiment in which the initial electron temperature was systematically changed to determine the effect that electron screening has on the ion thermalization. At lower initial electron temperatures, corresponding to a higher degree of electron shielding, it was found that the screening slows the ion thermalization and reduces the equilibrium ion temperature by as much as a factor of two. However, electron screening also reduces the ion interaction strength by the same amount, which has the net effect of leaving the effective Γ unchanged.Another method for increasing the strong coupling of an ultracold plasma is to excite the plasma ions to a higher ionization state. Simulations predict that doubly ionizing the plasma ions can increase the strong coupling in an ultracold plasma by as much as a factor of 4, with the maximum value of Γ depending on the timing of the second ionization relative to the DIH process. This thesis describes an experiment designed to test these predictions in a Ca2+ plasma. Measurements of the change in the Ca+ ion temperature as a function of the timing of the second ionization pulses were made using laser-induced fluorescence. Results of these measurements show that the heating of the Ca+ ions due to the second ionization depends on the timing of the second ionization pulses, as predicted by MD simulations.

•Jan 1, 2014•0 citations

High Resolution Measurement and Modeling of Ion Dynamics in an Ultracold Neutral Plasma

Patrick McQuillen

Using high-resolution laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy, ion dynamics in\nan expanding ultracold neutral plasma (UNP) have been studied in unprecedented\ndetail. The evolution of the ion temperature is of great interest because the ions in\nan ultracold neutral plasma are strongly coupled, meaning their Coulomb interaction\nenergy exceeds the thermal energy. This leads to novel plasma properties that are\nhard to describe theoretically. Understanding all the factors that contribute to ion\ntemperature evolution is critical for designing schemes to cool the ions and achieve\neven stronger Coulomb coupling.\nThis work has also observed several phenomena that have not previously been\nstudied in ultracold plasmas. Ion adiabatic cooling has been observed in a UNP for\nthe first time, resulting in ion temperatures as low as 100mK and up to a tripling of\nthe Coulomb coupling parameter. The importance of electron-ion energy transfer is\ndemonstrated with the first observations of electron-ion collisional heating. Inclusion\nof this effect into existing numerical models provides better agreement with experimental\nresults. Results of molecular dynamics simulations of equilibrating plasmas\nhave been compared to early time experimental data, which provides a new method\nof density determination that is much less sensitive to experimental systematics and\nis accurate to within 10%. This improved certainty in the density allows accurate\ncomparison between data and a theoretical model of the plasma dynamics. The\nagreement is excellent, but on a hydrodynamic time scale a small amount of extra\nheat (on order of 100mK), not ascribable to electron-ion collisions or other sources in\nthe model, is detected in the ion component. Potential sources are discussed within\nas well as proposals for further studies and improvements.

•Apr 22, 2015•0 citations

Expansion and electron temperature evolution in an ultracold neutral plasma

Priya Gupta

This work describes the evolution of an ultracold neutral plasma as it expands freely in vacuum. It presents a comprehensive study of the electron temperature evolution under different initial conditions. Ultracold neutral plasmas are created by photoionizing laser-cooled neutral atoms in ultrahigh vacuum. The ions are typically at a temperature of ∼ 1K while the electron temperature can be set from 1--1000 K. After photoionization, some of the highly energetic electrons escape from the cloud, leaving a net positive charge in the cloud. This creates a Coulomb well which traps the rest of the electrons, and a plasma is formed. Since the electrons have a lot of kinetic energy, they tend to leave the cloud, however, the Coulomb force from the ion pulls the electrons back into the cloud. This exerts a recoil force on the ions, and the whole plasma starts expanding radially outwards. Since the expansion is caused by the thermal pressure of the electrons, a study of the plasma expansion unravels the complicated electron temperature evolution, under different initial conditions. Many collisional processes become significant as a plasma expands. These physical processes tend to heat or cool the ions and electrons, leading to very different kinds of evolution depending on the initial conditions of the plasma. This work demonstrates three different regions of parameter space where the degree of significance of these physical processes is different during the ultracold neutral plasma evolution. The experimental results are verified by theoretical simulations, performed by Thomas Pohl, which untangle the complicated electron temperature evolution.

•Jan 1, 2007•2 citations
Abstract Plasma dynamics critically depends on density and temperature, thus well-controlled experimental realizations are essential benchmarks for theoretical models. The formation of an ultracold plasma can be triggered by ionizing a tunable number of atoms in a micrometer-sized volume of a 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by a single femtosecond laser pulse. The large density combined with the low temperature of the BEC give rise to an initially strongly coupled plasma in a so far unexplored regime bridging ultracold neutral plasma and ionized nanoclusters. Here, we report on ultrafast cooling of electrons, trapped on orbital trajectories in the long-range Coulomb potential of the dense ionic core, with a cooling rate of 400 K ps−1. Furthermore, our experimental setup grants direct access to the electron temperature that relaxes from 5250 K to below 10 K in less than 500 ns.
Abstract Understanding Coulomb driven many-body dynamics in ultracold atomic systems far from equilibrium remains an open challenge, particularly when ultrafast excitation channels create competing pathways toward Rydberg gases or ultracold plasmas. Here, we investigate the many-body dynamics in a 87 Rb Bose-Einstein condensate after exposure to a single femtosecond laser pulse. By tuning the laser wavelength across the two-photon ionization threshold, we can control the initial state that is either dominated by free electrons and leads to an ultracold plasma or dominated by electrons in excited states which leads to a dense Rydberg gas. The large bandwidth enables overcoming the Rydberg blockade that limits the excitation density for narrow-linewidth lasers. We directly measure the kinetic energy of the released electrons and compare the final distribution of free, bound and plasma electrons to molecular dynamics simulations where the electrons are modeled as individual particles including collisional ionization and recombination processes. We find very good agreement between the simulated electron distribution and the experimental observation. We identify charge imbalance as main driver for the decay of a dense Rydberg gas into an ultracold plasma.
By photoionizing samples of laser-cooled atoms with laser light tuned just above the ionization limit, plasmas can be created with electron and ion temperatures below 10 K. These ultracold neutral plasmas have extended the temperature bounds of plasma physics by two orders of magnitude. Table-top experiments, using many of the tools from atomic physics, allow for the study of plasma phenomena in this new regime with independent control over the density and temperature of the plasma through the excitation process. Characteristic of these systems is an inhomogeneous density profile, inherited from the density distribution of the laser-cooled neutral atom sample. Most work has dealt with unconfined plasmas in vacuum, which expand outward at velocities of order 100 m/s, governed by electron pressure, and with lifetimes of order 100 μs, limited by stray electric fields. Using detection of charged particles and optical detection techniques, a wide variety of properties and phenomena have been observed, including expansion dynamics, collective excitations in both the electrons and ions, and collisional properties. Through three-body recombination collisions, the plasmas rapidly form Rydberg atoms, and clouds of cold Rydberg atoms have been observed to spontaneously avalanche ionize to form plasmas. Of particular interest is the possibility of the formation of strongly coupled plasmas, where Coulomb forces dominate thermal motion and correlations become important. The strongest impediment to strong coupling is disorder-induced heating, a process in which Coulomb energy from an initially disordered sample is converted into thermal energy. This restricts electrons to a weakly coupled regime and leaves the ions barely within the strongly coupled regime. This review will give an overview of the field of ultracold neutral plasmas, from its inception in 1999 to current work, including efforts to increase strong coupling and effects on plasma properties due to strong coupling.
Ultracold neutral plasmas are created by photoionizing laser-cooled atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Due to their large electrical potential energies and comparatively small kinetic energies, ultracold plasmas fall into a regime of plasma systems which are called “strongly coupled.” A priority in the field of ultracold plasmas is to generate plasmas with higher values of the strong coupling parameter Γ, which is given as the ratio of the nearest-neighbor Coulomb potential energy to the average kinetic energy. The equilibrium strong coupling in ultracold plasmas is limited by the ultrafast relaxation of the ions due to spatial disorder in the initial system. This heating mechanism is called “disorder-induced heating” (DIH) and it limits the ion strong coupling in ultracold plasmas to order unity. This thesis describes experiments that explore ways to generate higher values of the strong coupling parameter in an ultracold neutral calcium plasma.One way to increase Γ is to mitigate the effects of DIH using electron screening. This thesis describes an experiment in which the initial electron temperature was systematically changed to determine the effect that electron screening has on the ion thermalization. At lower initial electron temperatures, corresponding to a higher degree of electron shielding, it was found that the screening slows the ion thermalization and reduces the equilibrium ion temperature by as much as a factor of two. However, electron screening also reduces the ion interaction strength by the same amount, which has the net effect of leaving the effective Γ unchanged.Another method for increasing the strong coupling of an ultracold plasma is to excite the plasma ions to a higher ionization state. Simulations predict that doubly ionizing the plasma ions can increase the strong coupling in an ultracold plasma by as much as a factor of 4, with the maximum value of Γ depending on the timing of the second ionization relative to the DIH process. This thesis describes an experiment designed to test these predictions in a Ca2+ plasma. Measurements of the change in the Ca+ ion temperature as a function of the timing of the second ionization pulses were made using laser-induced fluorescence. Results of these measurements show that the heating of the Ca+ ions due to the second ionization depends on the timing of the second ionization pulses, as predicted by MD simulations.
Using high-resolution laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy, ion dynamics in\nan expanding ultracold neutral plasma (UNP) have been studied in unprecedented\ndetail. The evolution of the ion temperature is of great interest because the ions in\nan ultracold neutral plasma are strongly coupled, meaning their Coulomb interaction\nenergy exceeds the thermal energy. This leads to novel plasma properties that are\nhard to describe theoretically. Understanding all the factors that contribute to ion\ntemperature evolution is critical for designing schemes to cool the ions and achieve\neven stronger Coulomb coupling.\nThis work has also observed several phenomena that have not previously been\nstudied in ultracold plasmas. Ion adiabatic cooling has been observed in a UNP for\nthe first time, resulting in ion temperatures as low as 100mK and up to a tripling of\nthe Coulomb coupling parameter. The importance of electron-ion energy transfer is\ndemonstrated with the first observations of electron-ion collisional heating. Inclusion\nof this effect into existing numerical models provides better agreement with experimental\nresults. Results of molecular dynamics simulations of equilibrating plasmas\nhave been compared to early time experimental data, which provides a new method\nof density determination that is much less sensitive to experimental systematics and\nis accurate to within 10%. This improved certainty in the density allows accurate\ncomparison between data and a theoretical model of the plasma dynamics. The\nagreement is excellent, but on a hydrodynamic time scale a small amount of extra\nheat (on order of 100mK), not ascribable to electron-ion collisions or other sources in\nthe model, is detected in the ion component. Potential sources are discussed within\nas well as proposals for further studies and improvements.
This work describes the evolution of an ultracold neutral plasma as it expands freely in vacuum. It presents a comprehensive study of the electron temperature evolution under different initial conditions. Ultracold neutral plasmas are created by photoionizing laser-cooled neutral atoms in ultrahigh vacuum. The ions are typically at a temperature of ∼ 1K while the electron temperature can be set from 1--1000 K. After photoionization, some of the highly energetic electrons escape from the cloud, leaving a net positive charge in the cloud. This creates a Coulomb well which traps the rest of the electrons, and a plasma is formed. Since the electrons have a lot of kinetic energy, they tend to leave the cloud, however, the Coulomb force from the ion pulls the electrons back into the cloud. This exerts a recoil force on the ions, and the whole plasma starts expanding radially outwards. Since the expansion is caused by the thermal pressure of the electrons, a study of the plasma expansion unravels the complicated electron temperature evolution, under different initial conditions. Many collisional processes become significant as a plasma expands. These physical processes tend to heat or cool the ions and electrons, leading to very different kinds of evolution depending on the initial conditions of the plasma. This work demonstrates three different regions of parameter space where the degree of significance of these physical processes is different during the ultracold neutral plasma evolution. The experimental results are verified by theoretical simulations, performed by Thomas Pohl, which untangle the complicated electron temperature evolution.