Short-time behavior of a spherically trapped Yukawa plasma

The formation of correlations in non-ideal plasmas and the associated heating or cooling effects have attracted considerable attention in recent years~[1-4]. These results were obtained for macroscopic plasmas. Here, this question is reconsidered for charged particles confined by a spherical trap. Langevin dynamics simulations are used to study the correlation buildup and the formation of a strongly correlated Coulomb liquid when starting from a completely uncorrelated state. We observe an oscillatory behavior of the potential energy with the signature of a breathing oscillation of the whole cluster and a strong dependence of the maximal heating effect on the initial density profile. Results are also presented for the temperature relaxation to equilibrium.\\[4pt] [1] M. Bonitz, D. Semkat and D. Kremp, Phys. Rev. E \textbf{56}, 1246 (1997)\newline [2] D. Semkat, D. Kremp, and M. Bonitz, Phys. Rev. E \textbf{59}, 1557 (1999) [3] D.O. Gericke, M.S. Murillo, D. Semkat, M. Bonitz, and D. Kremp, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. \textbf{36}, 6087-6093 (2003)\newline [4] D. Semkat et al., Progress in Nonequilibrium Green's functions II, p. 83, M. Bonitz and D. Semkat (Eds.), World Scientific Publ. (2003)