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arXiv · 1005.4670

Ion Acoustic Waves in Ultracold Neutral Plasmas

J. Castro·P. McQuillen·T. C. Killian
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Abstract

We photoionize laser-cooled atoms with a laser beam possessing spatially periodic intensity modulations to create ultracold neutral plasmas with controlled density perturbations. Laser-induced fluorescence imaging reveals that the density perturbations oscillate in space and time, and the dispersion relation of the oscillations matches that of ion acoustic waves, which are long-wavelength, electrostatic, density waves.

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J. Castro, P. McQuillen, T. C. Killian. 2010-05-25. Ion Acoustic Waves in Ultracold Neutral Plasmas. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.105.065004

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