Huws Landsberger Rose Hills
Cooling Electrons through Resonant Mode-Mode Coupling
Low temperature plasma physics is of importance to antimatter research, where sympathetic (collisional) cooling with a matter plasma brings energetic antimatter particles to a temperature at which creation of antiatoms is possible. Resonant cavity cooling, or cooling of a nonneutral plasma by coupling the radiation field with the electromagnetic modes inside a trap cavity, is a useful technique to cool plasmas to wall temperatures (10K) but may be difficult to perform due to plasma location or trap geometry. Therefore, understanding the effectiveness of mode-mode coupling in plasmas is essential; by coupling an easily cooled plasma to a mode, and the mode to another mode or plasma, a previously warm plasma may be cooled. Using the Fajans groups high resonance cavities in an electron trap, this phenomenon may be studied. Based off the results, using cavities or resonating circuits across electrodes may be used in conjunction with or in lieu of collisional cooling to obtain very cold plasmas. This may help to increase the production rate of testable antihydrogen in collaborations such as ALPHA at CERN, and lead to extreme precision on fundamental symmetry tests.
Message To Sponsor
I would wholeheartedly like to thank the Rose Hills Foundation for supporting me this summer so that I was able to pursue my endeavors in research. I was able to finally manage the lab by myself, learning and growing from the challenges I encountered when trying to emulate the past graduate students of the lab. With your support, I was able to single-mindedly devote myself to taking charge of the various tasks present when attempting to come up with solutions to problems tackling research problems, be they in the form of theoretical queries or implementation issues. Finally, this summer was an eye-opener in terms of what my next steps are going to be in both current and future research. Again, I am extremely grateful that the Rose Hills Foundation has granted me this opportunity.