Abstract
Non-neutral plasmas can be trapped for long times by means of combined electric and magnetic fields. Adiabatic cooling is achieved by slowly decreasing the trapping frequency and letting the plasma occupy a larger volume. We develop a fully kinetic time-dependent theory of adiabatic cooling for plasmas trapped in a one-dimensional well. This approach is further extended to three dimensions and applied to the cooling of antiproton plasmas, showing excellent agreement with recent experiments [Gabrielse et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 073002 (2011)].
- Received 8 November 2011
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.255005
© 2012 American Physical Society