The wave-particle microdynamics in the breaking of the self-excited dust acoustic wave growing in a dusty plasma liquid is investigated through directly tracking dust micromotion. It is found that the nonlinear wave growth and steepening stop as the mean oscillating amplitude of dust displacement reaches about 1/k (k is the wave number), where the vertical neighboring dust trajectories start to crossover and the resonant wave heating with uncertain crest trapping onsets. The dephased dust oscillations cause the abrupt dropping and broadening of the wave crest after breaking, accompanied by the transition from the liquid phase with coherent dust oscillation to the gas phase with chaotic dust oscillation. Corkscrew-shaped phase-space distributions measured at the fixed phases of the wave oscillation cycle clearly indicate how dusts move in and constitute the evolving waveform through dust-wave interaction.

We experimentally demonstrate the direct observation of defect mediated wave turbulence with fluctuating defects and low amplitude hole filaments, from a 3D self-excited plane dust acoustic wave in a dusty plasma by reducing dissipation. The waveform undulation is found to be the origin for the amplitude and the phase modulations of the local dust density oscillation, the broadening of the sharp peaks in the frequency spectrum, and the fluctuating defects. The corrugated wave crest surface also causes the observed high and low density patches in the transverse (xy) plane. Low oscillation amplitude spots (holes) share the same positions with the defects. Their trajectories in the xyt space appear in the form of chaotic filaments without long term predictability, through uncertain pair generation, propagation, and pair annihilation.

Intermittent dust acoustic wave turbulence self-excited by downward ion flow in dissipative dusty plasma is experimentally observed and investigated. The power spectra of the temporal dust density fluctuation show distinct bumps in the low-frequency regime and power-law scaling in the high-frequency regime. The structure-function analysis demonstrates the multifractal dynamics of the wave turbulence. Decreasing dissipation by decreasing neutral pressure leads to a more turbulent state with a less distinct low-frequency bump in the power spectrum, more stretched non-Gaussian tails in the histogram of the wave-height increment at a small time interval τ, and a higher degree of multifractality. The loss of long time memory with increasing τ for a more turbulent state causes a change from the distribution with stretched non-Gaussian tails to Gaussian with increasing τ.

No abstract

We experimentally investigate the micro-origin of the absence of trough trapping in nonlinear traveling dust acoustic waves self-excited by the downward ion flow in the dissipative dusty plasma. The wave forms of dust density, the drag force from the background neutrals, ions, and dusts, and the effective potential energy for dusts are constructed by tracking dust motion and measuring the velocity and the position-dependent forces. The tilted washboard type potential wave form with a slight phase lead to the dust density wave form is obtained. It provides sufficient kinetic energy to compensate drag dissipation and move dusts from the dust density trough to the crest front. The dusts with sufficient energy overcome the downward pushing by the crest front, climb over the crest, and sustain the oscillatory motion with upward drift. Those dusts with insufficient energy to climb over the potential barrier of the crest are trapped in and move downward with the crest front, until kicked upward by fluctuation. The upward neutral dominated drag force prevents them from sliding down the potential energy hill at the crest front and further oscillating in the trough. It leads to the absence of trough trapping.