Observation of ultrafast nonequilibrium collective dynamics in warm dense hydrogen

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Mar 26;104(12):125002. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.125002. Epub 2010 Mar 25.

Abstract

We investigate ultrafast (fs) electron dynamics in a liquid hydrogen sample, isochorically and volumetrically heated to a moderately coupled plasma state. Thomson scattering measurements using 91.8 eV photons from the free-electron laser in Hamburg (FLASH at DESY) show that the hydrogen plasma has been driven to a nonthermal state with an electron temperature of 13 eV and an ion temperature below 0.1 eV, while the free-electron density is 2.8x10{20} cm{-3}. For dense plasmas, our experimental data strongly support a nonequilibrium kinetics model that uses impact ionization cross sections based on classical free-electron collisions.