Expansion dynamics of a non-spherical ultracold plasma in a supersonic molecular beam

Molecular beam plasma dynamics are subject to a superposition of the residual molecular beam expansion of the laser illuminated excitation volume with ambipolar expansion owing to charged particle many-body interactions. We combine beam calculations with a consideration of the excitation processes that lead to plasma formation to determine the initial phase space distribution function of our plasma particles. Subsequent application of kinetic theory yields a model for the evolution of our system. By solving Vlasov's equation for our initial conditions, we obtain a first-order approximation for ambipolar expansion in the geometry of our system.