Laser Physics, Vol. 11, No. 9, 2001, pp. 977981.

Original Text Copyright 2001 by Astro, Ltd. English Translation Copyright 2001 by MAIK Nauka /Interperiodica (Russia).

INTERACTION OF LASER RADIATION WITH MATTER

On the Recombination Heating of Ultracold Laser-Produced Plasmas

A. N. Tkachev and S. I. Yakovlenko
General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, ul. Vavilova 38, Moscow, 119991 Russia
e-mail: syakov@kapella.gpi.ru Received May 10, 2001

AbstractIt is shown that the time dependences of the electron density measured by Kulin et al. (Kulin, S.D. et al., 2000, Phys. Rev. Lett., 85, 318) do not allow one to conclude whether three-body recombination occurs during the expansion of an ultracold laser-plasma plume. The assumption that recombination is suppressed is supported by the fact that no splash in the signal related to outgoing electrons was detected. Such a splash should be observed in the regime of recombination heating of plasma electrons.

1. INTRODUCTION Killian et al. [1] have reported the formation of an ultracold plasma with unique parameters: the charge density Ne ~ 2 109 cm3, the electron temperature Te ~ 0.1 K, the ion temperature Ti ~ 10 K, and the ionization degree of about 0.1. Such a plasma was produced through a two-stage ionization of laser-cooled metastable-state xenon. The authors of [1] also reported that the measured plasma lifetime is anomalously large, being ~100 s. In our papers [2, 3], the results of experiments [1] were analyzed in terms of the theory summarized in review papers [47]. It was shown that the observed lifetime is consistent with these nontraditional concepts. Later experiments by Kulin et al. [8] were devoted to the study of the expansion of an ultracold-plasma plume. This paper, in particular, presents the data concerning temporal variations in plasma density. These results allow a fuller analysis of the experimental situation in terms of conventional concepts to be performed. We start our analysis with the following precedent. Panchenko et al. [9, 10] have observed a long-term emission of a plasma bubble produced by laser radiation evaporating the surface of a metal target into a gas. However, recombination deceleration under these conditions was attributed to a recombination heating of electrons [10, 11]. It would be natural to try to explain the anomalously large lifetime of ultracold plasmas in terms of recombination heating. This paper is devoted to the analysis of this issue. 2. COMPUTATIONAL MODEL Experiments [8] have demonstrated that the temporal variation in the mean electron density approxi-

mately follows the law corresponding to hydrodynamic expansion: N = n/ [ 4 ( 0 + v 0 t ) ] .

2 2 2 3/2

(1)

Here, n is the total number of photoelectrons, 0 is the initial radius of a Gaussian plasma plume, and v0 is the expansion velocity. Then, relying on the data of [8], we can employ the following approximation for the expansion velocity within a broad range of experimental parameters: ( 3050 ) m/s, for E e /k B < 70 K v0 = E e /m i , for E e /k B > 70 K. (2)

Here, Ee is the initial energy of electrons produced through photoionization, mi is the mass of xenon ions, and = 1.7 is the tting parameter. Using this circumstance, we can write the following equations for the temperature and density of electrons averaged in space (cf. [10, 11] and [5, p. 500]): d Ne C 3 f ( t/t 0 ) --------- = ------- N e --------------- N e , 9/2 t0 dt Te dT e C 2 2 f ( t/t 0 ) 2 -------- = -- + T e ------- N e -- --------------- T e . 3 T 9/2 3 t0 dt e Here, C = ( 2 e )/ ( 45m e ) 1.3 10
9/2 3/2 10 1/2 7

(3a)

(3b)

cm s

9/2

1.7 10

25

cm s

eV

9/2

977

978 Ne(t), N(t) 1 109 1 108

TKACHEV, YAKOVLENKO (a) 100[N(t) Ne(t)]/N(t), Te(t)/Te0 100 t0 10 1 107 1 106 1 105 1 1 (b)

10

100 0.1 t, s

10

100 t, s

Fig. 1. Temporal evolution of plasma parameters: (a) the solid curve shows the electron density, the dotted curve corresponds to expansion with no recombination (1), and the dots represent the experimental data for the electron density; (b) the solid curve shows the percentage of electrons undergoing recombination and the dotted line represents the electron temperature in units of Te0. The initial parameters are 0 = 220 m, v0 = 50 m/s, Ne0 = 109 cm3, and Te0 = 4.2 K (Ee = 6.3 K).

is the rate constant characterizing three-body recombination, ( 1/2 ) ln ( 1 + 9/ ( 4 3 ) ), ( ) = 1, for > 0.5 for < 0.5

mee4/2 2 and n is the principal quantum number corresponding to the given value of ), we derive m4 e4 1 e T e ------------- ---------------- 8 6 2 2 ( N et0 )
1/9

(4)

is the Coulomb logarithm [ e2(2Ne)1/3/ Te], f () = 3/(1 + 2) is the function characterizing variations in the density and temperature of electrons due to plume expansion, t0 = 0/v0 is the characteristic expansion time of the plasma plume, and is the energy released in the electron gas per single recombination event. We restrict our analysis to time intervals much shorter than the time of electronion energy exchange: me T e mi 3 ei = -------- ------------- ------------------ . 3m e 4 2 e 4 N e For Ne = 109 cm3 and Te0 = 4.2 K, we have ei 200 s. Consequently, for time intervals on the order of the expansion time of a plasma plume, t0 5 s, electron ion collisions with energy exchange can be neglected. We will determine the recombination energy release by comparing the frequency of Coulomb collisions accompanied by a transfer of the energy [12] with the inverse plasma-expansion time t0: ( T e /2m e ) ( e /T e ) N e ( T e / ) 1/t 0 .
1/2 2 3 2 3/2

For example, with Ne ~ 109 cm3 and t0 5 s, we have 5Te. 3. RESULTS OF CALCULATIONS Below, we will compare time dependences of plasma parameters obtained from the solution of the set of equations (3) with the data presented in Fig. 2 in [8]. The results of calculations for the minimum initial electron temperature Te0 = 4.2 K are shown in Fig. 1. The minimum initial temperature was determined in the following way. According to our previous results [2, 3, 6, 7, 13, 14], electrons are heated due to collective interactions within a time interval approximately corresponding to half the inverse Langmuir frequency, 1 0.5 L , L = (4e2Ne/me)1/2. The phase trajectory of a system of many Coulomb particles becomes mixed within this period of time. The mixing time is characterized by the Lyapunov index L 2.4L [6, 7, 15, 16]. While at the initial moment of time, the nonideality parameter = e2(2Ne)1/3/Te is much higher than unity, mixing decreases this parameter down to lim 0.350.5. For the considered conditions (Ne ~ 109 cm3), the heating time, 0.5 L 0.3 ns, is less than the time required to ionize the gas with a laser pulse (~10 ns).
1

Using this relationship to determine and invoking 2 3 the expressions = Ry/ n and = 2Ry/ n (Ry =

LASER PHYSICS

Vol. 11

No. 9

2001

ON THE RECOMBINATION HEATING Ne(t), N(t) 1 109 1 108 1 107 1 103 1 106 1 105 1 1 104 1 105 0.1 100[N(t) Ne(t)]/N(t), Te(t)/Te0 1 t0 0.1 0.01

979

(a)

(b)

10

100 t, s

10

100 t, s

Fig. 2. The same as in Fig. 1 for a high initial temperature, v0 = 108 m/s and Te0 = 211 K (Ee = 316 K).

Therefore, the initial temperature is no lower in its order of magnitude than some limiting temperature T emin ( N e ) e ( 2N e ) / lim 4.2 ( N e 10 cm )
2 1/3 9 3 1/3

K.

In our calculations, we started with this temperature. As can be seen from our data, more than 10% of electrons recombine within 10 ns. Due to recombination heating, the electron temperature increases by a factor of 3.5 for t ~ 5 s. We should note, however, that the experimental variations in the electron density do not allow us to judge whether recombination occurs or not. In the case when the initial energy of photoelectrons is high (see Fig. 2), the scenario of relaxation changes. The electron temperature remains unchanged until electron cooling starts due to expansion. Recombination heating is insignicant under these conditions. 4. ON THE UNCOMPENSATED CHARGE 4.1. The Potential Well The plasma plume contained up to 5 105 atoms under conditions of experiments [1, 8]. Some of the electrons in such a situation escaped from the plasma volume. We employed the model described in [27] to simulate the dynamics of many Coulomb particles in order to reveal the inuence of the uncompensated charge on plasma parameters. When modeling a plasma plume, we dened the initial coordinates of n = 512 ions and n = 512 electrons inside some part of the simulation volume (a cube), namely, inside a sphere with a radius R = (4Ne/3n)1/3 39 m located at the center of the cube (the cube edge length l = 800 m). It was assumed that particles reaching the cube walls get frozen on these walls.
LASER PHYSICS Vol. 11 No. 9 2001

As one might expect, only a small fraction of electrons escape from the sphere occupied by ions (see Fig. 3). Under these conditions, charge remains uncompensated only at the periphery of the sphere (see also [17]). Our computational resources allow us to model plasma plumes with much smaller sizes than the sizes of plasma plumes produced in experiments [1, 8]. Nevertheless, even small plasma plumes with parameters [1, 8] efciently trap electrons, and only a small fraction of electrons escape from the initial sphere. Let us estimate the depth of the potential well using a very simple approach. The ux of electrons from the 2 plume is given by 41/2 0 Ne(2Te/me)1/2 exp(Ub/Te)(1 + Ub/Te). If the number of electrons escaping from the plume within the time t normalized to the total num2 ber of electrons n = Ne(4 0 )3/2 is equal to esc, then the potential barrier x = Ub/Te is given by esc 0 x e ( 1 + x ) = -------------------------------- . 1/2 ( 2T e /m e ) t (5)

With esc ~ 0.1 and t ~ 0.25 s, which corresponds to the results of [1], we have Ub ~ 23 K. The electron ux is highly sensitive to the depth of the potential well and the electron temperature. When the temperature abruptly increases or the depth of the potential well decreases, the electron ux on the collector should steeply grow. This effect is observed in experiments, when an electric eld linearly growing with a growth rate of 0.05 (V/cm)/(2 s) is applied to the plasma (see Fig. 1 in [1]). When the external eld is ~0.05 V/cm (for t 1.52 s), a sharp splash of the signal related to outgoing electrons is observed. This splash is detected for close eld strengths with different

980 ni, e(r), ue(r)10/K 600 400 200 0 200 400 Ni, e(r) 1 1010 1 109 1 108 1 107 1 106 0 50 100 150 R

TKACHEV, YAKOVLENKO

(a)

the potential well, ~ Ub. It would be natural to assume that the ux of electrons from the plasma under these conditions is comparable with the number of electrons recombining per unit time. This nding also brings us to a conclusion that about a half of the total number of electrons should escape from the plasma within several microseconds in the presence of recombination (see Fig. 1). However, this is not what is observed experimentally. 4.2. On the Mechanism of Plasma Acceleration In [17], we considered a Coulomb explosion in a laser-produced plasma with a cylindrical geometry. Performing a similar analysis for a spherical case, we can derive the following expressions describing the time dependences of the velocity and the radius of the boundary of a charged plume: v ( x ) = v 0 ( 1 1/x ), t/t 0 = ( x x )
2 1/2

(b) R

200 r, m

Fig. 3. Distributions of (solid curves) ions and (dotted curve) electrons over the distance from the center of a sphere with a radius R where the initial coordinates of particles were dened: (a) n(r) is the number of particles within a sphere with radius r, the dashed line shows the electron potential energy u(r) in units of K/10 at the point r and (b) N(r) is the density of particles at the distance r (in m). Averaging is performed over the time interval 7TL < t < 8TL (where TL = 2/L is the Langmuir period).

+ ( 1/2 ) ln ( 2x 1 + 2 ( x x ) ),
2

1/2

x = r/ 0 ,

v 0 = ( 2eq/ 0 m i ) ,
1/2

densities of the plasma plume, Ne ~ 107109 cm3, although the signal detected in a plasma with a higher density has a much larger amplitude. This result is consistent with the fact that, as can be seen from Eq. (5), the depth of the potential well trapping the electrons is independent of the density. The external eld changes the potential on the spatial scale on the order of the plume size by 0.050 V/cm ~ 13 K, which is comparable with the depth of the potential well (5). The heating of electrons by an external high-frequency electric eld with a frequency close to the Langmuir frequency also increases the electron temperature, giving rise to a splash in the number of electrons escaping from the plasma. This effect underlies the method of measurement of the time dependence of the electron density employed in [8]. Note that, in the regime of recombination heating, the electron temperature also increases by several times, and the characteristic time scale of this process is also on the order of a microsecond (see Fig. 1). However, in accordance with the data of [8], the outgoing ow of electrons from the plasma plume virtually stops within the time t ~ 0.25 s. We should note also that the outgoing ow of electrons from the plasma promotes the cooling of electrons remaining in the plasma. The energy released per recombination event under these conditions is on the order of the energy spent to remove an electron from

where q = 4e 0 0 ( Ni(r) Nie(r))r 2dr is the uncompensated charge of the plasma plume. To provide some estimates, we will assume that the uncompensated charge is concentrated within a Debye layer with a thickness rD = (4e2Ne/Te)1/2. Then, with Ne ~ 109 cm3 and Te ~ 4.2 K, we have q/e = 4/ 0 r D 3 10 ,
2 3

v 0 = ( 4 0 /m i ) ( N e T e )
1/2

1/2

1/4

150 m/s.

As the uncompensated charge is detached from the plasma, electrons should leave the area of uncompensated charge, giving rise to a new boundary, which should be accelerated again. The characteristic expansion velocity of the main fraction of plasma mass should be several times lower than the expansion velocity of the boundary of uncompensated charge, v0 ~ 150 m/s. This is exactly what was observed in experiments [8]. 5. CONCLUSION The analysis performed above shows that the time dependences of the electron density measured in [8] do not allow one to conclude whether three-body recombination occurs in the expansion of an ultracold laserplasma plume. The assumption that recombination is suppressed is supported by the fact that no splash in the signal related to outgoing electrons was detected [1, 8]. Such a splash should be observed in the regime of recombination heating of plasma electrons.
LASER PHYSICS Vol. 11 No. 9 2001

ON THE RECOMBINATION HEATING

981

REFERENCES
1. Killian, T.C., Kulin, S., Bergeson, S.D., et al., 1999, Phys. Rev. Lett., 83, 4776. 2. Tkachev, A.N. and Yakovlenko, S.I., 2000, Kvantovaya Elektron., 30, 1077. 3. Tkachev, A.N. and Yakovlenko, S.I., 2001, Pisma Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz., 73, 71 [2001, JETP Lett., 73, 66]. 4. Maiorov, S.A., Tkachev, A.N., and Yakovlenko, S.I., 1994, Usp. Fiz. Nauk, 164, 298 [1994, Phys. Usp., 37, 279]. 5. Mayorov, S.A., Tkachev, A.N., and Yakovlenko, S.I., 1995, Phys. Scr., 51, 498. 6. Tkachev, A.N. and Yakovlenko, S.I., 1998, Izv. Vyssh. Uchebn. Zaved. Fiz., 41, no. 1, 47. 7. Yakovlenko, S.I., 1998, Phys. Vibr., 6, 267. 8. Kulin, S.D., Killian, T.C., Bergeson, S., and Rolston, S.L., 2000, Phys. Rev. Lett., 85, 318.

9. Panchenko, A.N., Tarasenko, V.F., and Yakovlenko, S.I., 1992, Kvantovaya Elektron., 19, no. 9. 10. Panchenko, A.I., Tarasenko, V.F., Tkachev, A.N., and Yakovlenko, S.I., 1993, Laser Phys., 3, 542. 11. Tkachev, A.N. and Yakovlenko, S.I., 1993, Kvantovaya Elektron., 20, 111. 12. Tkachev, A.N. and Yakovlenko, S.I., 1994, Izv. Vyssh. Uchebn. Zaved. Fiz., 37, no. 9, 3 [1994, Russ. Phys. J., 37, no. 9, 799]. 13. Tkachev, A.N. and Yakovlenko, S.I., 1995, Pisma Zh. Tekh. Fiz., 21, 90 [1995, JTP Lett., 21, 946]. 14. Tkachev, A.N. and Yakovlenko, S.I., 1997, Zh. Tekh. Fiz., 67, 42 [1997, Tech. Phys., 42, 891]. 15. Tkachev, A.N. and Yakovlenko, S.I., 1997, Pisma Zh. Tekh. Fiz., 23, no. 17, 68 [1997, JTP Lett., 21, 686]. 16. Tkachev, A.N. and Yakovlenko, S.I., 1998, Dokl. Akad. Nauk, 359, no. 6, 765. 17. Tkachev, A.N. and Yakovlenko, S.I., 1993, Kvantovaya Elektron., 20, 1117.

LASER PHYSICS

Vol. 11

No. 9

2001