Abstract

Ultracold neutral plasmas represent a regime of plasmas that is not entirely described by theory, but is critical to our understanding of many phenomena. Though their low temperature makes observing them more manageable, even "confined" ultracold plasmas do not remain contained for more than a few hundred microseconds. No steady state or long-term confinement of an ultracold plasma created by pulse ionization has ever been demonstrated. In this thesis, the construction of a Penning trap for calcium ultracold neutral plasma is presented. The trap consists of a uniform magnetic field to trap the electrons radially and a quadrupole electric field to trap them in the axial direction, under the hypothesis that the space charge of the electrons will trap the ions. To the best of the author's knowledge, no ion trap of this configuration has been used to confine ultracold neutral plasmas. In addition to the Penning trap, this thesis also presents work done on other projects. This includes data acquisition and analysis on freely expanding ultracold neutral plasmas with varying density gradients, research on dielectric discharge barrier plasmas, and presentations given on these subjects. Finally, a short list of skills developed over the course of this program is given.

Degree

College and Department

Computational, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences; Physics and Astronomy

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