Strongly Coupled Plasmas via Rydberg Blockade of Cold Atoms

G. Bannasch, T. C. Killian, and T. Pohl

Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 253003 – Published 18 June 2013

Abstract

We propose and analyze a new scheme to produce ultracold neutral plasmas deep in the strongly coupled regime. The method exploits the interaction blockade between cold atoms excited to high-lying Rydberg states and therefore does not require substantial extensions of current ultracold plasma experiments. Extensive simulations reveal a universal behavior of the resulting Coulomb coupling parameter, providing a direct connection between the physics of strongly correlated Rydberg gases and ultracold plasmas. The approach is shown to reduce currently accessible temperatures by more than an order of magnitude, which opens up a new regime for ultracold plasma research and cold ion-beam applications with readily available experimental techniques.

Received 29 January 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.253003

Authors & Affiliations

G. Bannasch¹, T. C. Killian², and T. Pohl¹

¹Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, D-01187 Dresden, Germany
²Rice University, Department of Physics and Astronomy and Rice Quantum Institute, Houston, Texas 77251, USA