Ultrafast dynamics of strongly coupled plasmas.
The ultrafast dynamics of a strongly coupled plasma following an energy landscape shift is studied theoretically and with simulation. To lowest order in time, the inertial dynamics on the new landscape can be characterized by the plasma microfield, which, for the randomly ordered case of an ultracold neutral plasma, is dominated by nearest neighbor interactions. Formation of the pair correlation function arises after ballistic overshoot, which leads to oscillations in the effective temperature. Warm dense matter systems are also considered in this context.