Suppressing electron disorder-induced heating of ultracold neutral plasma via optical lattice

TL;DR

This paper proposes using an optical lattice to suppress disorder-induced heating in ultracold neutral plasmas, enabling stronger Coulomb coupling and advancing research in strongly coupled electronic plasmas.

Contribution

It introduces a novel scheme employing optical lattices to reduce electronic DIH in ultracold plasmas, demonstrated through classical molecular dynamics simulations.

Findings

Electronic DIH is suppressed by a factor of 1.3.

Coulomb coupling strength reaches 0.8, nearing strong coupling.

Optical lattice scheme is feasible under experimental conditions.

Abstract

Disorder-induced heating (DIH) prevents ultracold neutral plasma into electron strong coupling regime. Here we propose a scheme to suppress electronic DIH via optical lattice. We simulate the evolution dynamics of ultracold neutral plasma constrained by three-dimensional optical lattice using classical molecular dynamics method. The results show that for experimentally achievable condition, electronic DIH is suppressed by a factor of 1.3, and the Coulomb coupling strength can reach to 0.8 which is approaching the strong coupling regime. Suppressing electronic DIH via optical lattice may pave a way for the research of electronic strongly coupled plasma.