“Noisy” emission of a slowly released single component plasma

A single component plasma confined in a Penning–Malmberg trap may be released in a controlled manner by regulating the rate at which one of the confining (gate) potentials is dropped. A close inspection of the emission profiles of such plasmas has revealed fluctuations far beyond those that might be expected from counting statistics, with additional features becoming prominent when the gate is lowered slowly. The exact mechanism behind the observed emission characteristics are not known at this time and we show here some details and consider possible explanations. We also demonstrate a quick and simple method to measure the plasma collision frequency.