Ultracold plasma in a magneto optical trap

Author(s)

Dulce Cristina Jacinto Rezende

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Carlos.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Física de São Carlos (IFSC/BT)
• Defense date: 2005-03-23

Examining board members

Luis Gustavo Marcassa; Samuel Leite de Oliveira; Fernando Jorge da Paixão Filho

• Advisor: Luis Gustavo Marcassa

Abstract

In this work we produced an ultracold neutral plasma of 85Rb formed by the photoionization of laser-cooled atoms. We measured the number of particles evaporated from the plasma in the moment of its formation using the time-of-flight technique. After this, we studied the evaporation rate as a function of the initial electron kinetic energy, for this we created the plasma at different wavelengths of the photoinization laser. Our results indicate that as we supplied more energy to the system more particles evaporate and we verified that it is in agreement with the literature. We interpreted the result with an analytic model that considers the Maxwell-Boltzmann energy distribution and we found the plasma temperature as a function initial electron temperature (AU)