Electric Field Heating during Ultracold Plasma Formation

Ultracold plasmas are interesting in part because they are cold enough that strong coupling effects can be made manifest in these systems at their typical densities. In order to study strong coupling effects, sufficiently low temperatures need to be obtained. While DC electric fields are useful in manipulating and detecting electrons from ultracold plasmas, a DC electric field applied during ultracold plasma formation can result in significant heating of the electron component. We used molecular dynamics simulations to study this heating process and to determine its impact as a function of ultracold plasma initial electron temperature, density, and spatial size. We find that this heating can have a significant impact on the lowest achievable temperatures for lower-density ultracold plasmas in particular.