Universality in the Equilibration of Quenched Yukawa One Component Plasmas

dc.contributor.advisorKillian, Thomas Cen_US
dc.creatorLangin, Thomas Karlen_US
dc.date.accessioned2020-02-05T15:05:05Zen_US
dc.date.available2020-02-05T15:05:05Zen_US
dc.date.created2015-12en_US
dc.date.issued2016-02-15en_US
dc.date.submittedDecember 2015en_US
dc.date.updated2020-02-05T15:05:06Zen_US
dc.description.abstractA Yukawa one-component plasma (OCP) is an idealized model in which particles interact through a 1/r potential with an additional exponential falloff with length scale 1/κ expressed in units of the average interparticle spacing. This model is used to approximately describe a wide range of physical systems, especially strongly coupled plasmas; i.e., those which have Γ≥1, where Γ is the ratio of the Coulomb interaction energy between neighboring particles to the kinetic energy per particle. All dynamics and physical properties in Yukawa OCPs are expected to be universal in κ when expressed in appropriate scaled units. We study a particularly clean realization of the Yukawa OCP, an ultracold neutral plasma (UNP) created by photoionization of an ultracold atomic gas. The rapid quench to a UNP results in an equilibration process known as Disorder Induced Heating (DIH). Even after DIH the plasma is strongly coupled, with Γ~3. During DIH, oscillations in 1/Γ (i.e. scaled Kinetic Energy) occurring at twice the plasma frequency, ω_{pi}, are observed, possibly indicating coupling to collective modes. Universality is demonstrated by showing that 1/Γ(t) curves taken at similar κ collapse onto the same curve when plotted vs. ω_{pi}t. We also compare our results to molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The utility of the universality is shown by using the MD simulations to determine the density from experimental DIH measurements.en_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_US
dc.identifier.citationLangin, Thomas Karl. "Universality in the Equilibration of Quenched Yukawa One Component Plasmas." (2016) Master’s Thesis, Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/107997">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/107997</a>.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/107997en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.subjectPlasma Physicsen_US
dc.subjectAtomic Physicsen_US
dc.subjectStrontiumen_US
dc.titleUniversality in the Equilibration of Quenched Yukawa One Component Plasmasen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.materialTexten_US
thesis.degree.departmentPhysics and Astronomyen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineNatural Sciencesen_US
thesis.degree.grantorRice Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelMastersen_US
thesis.degree.majorPhysicsen_US
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Scienceen_US
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