Moderation of recombination in an ultracold laser-produced plasma

It is shown that the recent production [T C Killian et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 83 4776 (1999)] of an ultracold laser plasma (N_e ~ 2 × 10⁹ cm^–3, T_e ~ 0.1 K, T_i ~ 10 μK) can be considered as the first experimental demonstration of the metastable state of a supercooled plasma which we predicted theoretically. Our theory provides an explanation for the moderation of three-body recombination observed in the above-cited paper. We present the calculations that simulate the conditions of the ultracold-plasma experiments.