Effect of nonideality on the collisional recombination coefficient in an ultracold plasma

The effect of nonideality on the dependence of the collisional recombination coefficient $\alpha$ in an ultracold plasma on the temperature $T_e$ and density $n_e$ of electrons is discussed. It has been shown that the dependence of the recombination coefficient on the density and temperature $\alpha\sim n_e^2T_e^{-9/2}$ characteristic of a weakly nonideal plasma is transformed to $\alpha\sim n_e^{1.2}T_e^{-2}$ when the ratio of the potential energy to the kinetic energy of an electron (nonideality parameter) reaches unity. As the nonideality parameter increases, the temperature dependence disappears and the density dependence becomes $n_e^{1/2}$. The existing theoretical results for various physical models have been analyzed and compared to the experimental data.