Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 15: Poster I

A 15.55: Poster

Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 16:30–19:00, VMP 9 Poster

Rydberg atom formation in strongly correlated ultracold neutral plasmas — •Georg Bannasch and Thomas Pohl — Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, Nöthnitzer Str. 38, 01187 Dresden

In plasmas at very low temperatures the recombination into neutral atoms is known to be dominated by three-body recombination, owing to the strong ∼ T^−9/2 scaling with the electron temperature. While this law is well proven at high temperatures, the unphysical divergence as T→0 clearly suggest a breakdown in the low-temperature regime. Despite ongoing debates about its extension into the low-temperature, and consequently strong coupling regime, a conclusive answer is still missing.

The advent of ultracold neutral plasmas has refocussed interest in recombination under such exotic conditions, and experimental studies of the involved questions may be anticipated.

Here we present a combined molecular dynamics - Monte Carlo study of electron-ion recombination over a wide range of temperatures and densities. Our calculations reach far into the strongly coupled regime, in which the charges may be nearly crystallized. Such unusual neutral plasma states clearly defy common few-particle collision models, and their lifetime and stability is yet to be determined.