| Summary: | In the last decade, ultracold plasmas have been created in the laboratory by photo-ionizing laser-cooled atoms. To understand the overall dynamics of ultracold plasmas, one needs to understand Rydberg collisional processes at ultracold temperatures. The two kinds of problems addressed in this thesis are: study of Rydberg atomic processes at ultracold temperatures, and a study of the overall dynamics of
the ultracold plasmas.
Theoretical methods based on quantal-classical correspondence is used to understand Rydberg atomic processes such as radiative cascade, and radiative recombination. A simulation method suitable for ultracold collisions is developed and tested.
This method is then applied to study collisional-Stark mixing in Rydberg atoms.
To study the dynamics of the ultracold plasmas, a King model for the electrons in plasmas is proposed. The King model is a stationary, finite sized electron distribution for the electrons in a cloud of fixed ions with a Gaussian distribution. A Monte-Carlo method is developed to simulate the overall dynamics of the King distribution.
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