Killian, Thomas C.2012-09-062012-09-062012-09-062012-09-062012-052012-09-05May 2012McQuillen, Patrick. "High Resolution Sculpting and Imaging of Ultracold Neutral Plasmas." (2012) Master’s Thesis, Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/64695">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/64695</a>.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/64695The sculpting of ultracold neutral plasmas represents a frontier in the experimental study of collective modes in strongly coupled plasmas. By extending the range of accessible length scales to less than tens of microns we gain access to a regime where The sculpting of ultracold neutral plasmas represents a frontier in the experimental study of collective modes in strongly coupled plasmas. By extending the range of accessible length scales to less than tens of microns we gain access to a regime where strong coupling's effects are predicted yet largely untested. To this effort, high resolution optical systems were designed, bench tested and implemented for sculpting and imaging ultracold neutral plasmas. Many complications and unexpected effects were documented to assist future experimental design considerations, including, those due to saturation and optical thickness, both of which limit the utility of 461 nm push beam modulations. It was concluded that sculpting should be performed on the 412 nm ionizing beam and real-time density space analysis is reliable for spatial frequencies up to 5 cyc/mm by using 4X magnified imaging. Higher spatial frequencies benefit from velocity space analysis due to extremely fast dynamics and low intensity levels.application/pdfengCopyright 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.Ultracold neutral plasmasStrong couplingCollective modesThesis2012-09-06123456789/ETD-2012-05-169