Abstract

A cold plasma produced by laser excitation of trapped atoms at very low temperature creates an unusual ionic configuration of Coulomb crystal type before it starts to expand under pressure. A simple model is constructed to describe such a state at the time of plasma formation. The potential of the ions and a threshold shift in the electron energy are estimated. The shift is found to be Δ P ≃ C P / a, where a is the Wigner–Seitz radius and C P is a universal constant C P ≃11±5, all in atomic units. The experimentally observed anomalies in the ion velocity and its dependence on the plasma density at very low temperature have been treated in terms of C P , as v I≃ C P/Ma . The effective electron temperature can also be defined as T e ≃ Δ P /2.

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