External Control of Electron Temperature in Ultra-Cold Plasmas

Abstract

This thesis discusses progress towards achieving external control of the electron temperature and the Coulomb coupling parameter of ultra-cold plasmas.Using a Littman dye laser, we create the plasma by partially photoionizing a dense, cold sample of rubidium atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). At a controllable time delay, we excite neutral atoms in the plasma to a specific Rydberg state using a narrow bandwidth pulsed dye laser. We have made progress towards optimizing and quantifying the achievable Rydberg atom density by using mm-wave spectroscopy to control the evolution of a cold dense Rydberg sample to plasma and have also begun preliminary investigations of plasma electron temperature measurements.i