One-Dimensional Cooling of an Ultracold Neutral Strontium Plasma

The application of laser cooling to neutral plasmas opens a wide range of experimental possibilities. This would be a new method of plasma confinement. Trapped plasma can be stored for longer times enabling detailed investigations of strong coupling, recombination at ultracold temperatures, and ion-ion thermalization. Recently, the ultracold plasma group at Rice has developed a high power laser source capable of laser cooling an ultracold neutral strontium plasma. Preliminary results on one-dimensional laser cooling of the plasma will be presented.