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Abstract-Under suitable conditions, micron-sized dust particles introduced into inductively coupled argon plasma form a stable microscopic crystal lattice, known as a Coulomb (or plasma) crystal. In the experiment described, an external axial magnetic field was applied to various configurations of Coulomb crystal, including small crystal lattices consisting of one to several particles, and large crystal lattices with many hundreds of particles. The crystals were observed to rotate collectively under the influence of the magnetic field. This paper describes the experimental procedures and the preliminary results of this investigation.

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Dust clusters, consisted of one up to twelve particles arranged in a horizontal plane, were formed in an inductively coupled rf plasma. When an axial magnetic field was applied to the dust clusters, the clusters rotate collectively in the left-handed direction with respect to the field. It was observed in our cluster rotation that, for single ring cluster, the angular velocity of the rotation increased linearly as the magnetic field strength increased. And for double ring dust clusters, the angular velocity increases linearly at low magnetic field and but then saturated at high magnetic field ð$ 60GÞ: Comparison of our experimental results with theoretical models from literature has been made and an explanation for the angular velocity saturation of the dust cluster rotation has been provided.