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Condensed-matter physics

Plasmas put in order

Plasmas are usually a hot soup of dissociated electrons and ions. There are, however, techniques for cooling plasmas, and simulations show that an ultracold plasma could be made to crystallize.

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Figure 1: Crystallization in a laser-cooled neutral plasma.

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Killian, T. Plasmas put in order. Nature 429, 815–817 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/429815a

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