Federal Science Agency Perspectives on Strongly Coupled Plasmas

The strongly coupled plasma regime presents opportunities for discovery science and appears in many physical situations of direct relevance to national security. These include understanding of high-energy density (HED) astrophysical systems, fusion plasmas, dusty ionospheric plasmas, plasmas from ultra-fast laser-materials interactions, and plasmas generated by conventional explosives. Since the creation of ultracold plasmas in 1999, the atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics and plasma physics communities have enjoyed unprecedented experimental control over the creation and diagnosis of the resulting strongly coupled plasmas. Federal funding agencies have sought to bring together the plasma physics and AMO communities in the creation, diagnosis, and modeling of strongly coupled plasmas. Enhancing the ability to create ever stronger coupled plasmas by sculpting particle distribution functions has been of particular interest, allowing to compare experimental studies with theory and computation to develop better understanding of these novel systems. Support has been focused on enhancing the capability of the AMO community to create and diagnose ultracold plasmas, and on coupling these efforts to the HED physics studies where strongly coupled plasmas are often produced.