Strongly coupled dusty plasmas: crystals, liquids, clusters and waves

Abstract

The dusty plasma is a system that consists of many strongly-charged fine dust particles suspended in a plasma background. The slow dynamics and strong coupling due to the large mass and charges lead to the formation of highly-ordered dust crystal structures suspended in the plasma background, which can be directly observed. The dusty plasma forms a link to the area of condensed matter physics for the study of many interesting microscopic phenomena from order to disorder. In this paper, we introduce the special properties of this system from the viewpoint of conventional plasma physics, then we briefly review past works on the structure and dynamical behaviour from the highly-ordered state, through the melting and liquid states with associated vortex-type excitation and anomalous diffusion, to the state with self-organized macroscopic dust waves after losing microscopic order. The first observation of strongly-coupled dust Coulomb clusters with small numbers of particles from a few to a few hundred, which resemble classical atoms, is also demonstrated.

Dynamical processes in complex plasmas

“…on dusty plasmas in space [9], technological applications [10], or on waves in dusty space plasmas [11]. Recent surveys on subtopics cover dust phenomena in processing plasmas [12], waves and instabilities in dusty plasmas [13], laser excited waves in plasma crystals [14,15], solid and liquid phases in dusty plasmas [16][17][18], magnetic field effects [19], diagnostical aspects [20], and collective processes in dusty plasmas [21,22].…”

The physics and chemistry of dusty plasmas

“…The presence of these objects in the plasma leads to changes in the basic plasma parameters such as electron density and electron temperature. Depending on the plasma parameter range, particle coupling may occur, leading to the transition towards a Coulomb crystal or liquid [6].…”

“…In the following we would like to restrict ourselves to the physics and chemistry of dusty, reactive plasmas. Other exciting points of view of dusty plasmas such as in astrophysics [5] and Coulomb crystals [6] have been recently reviewed in this journal.…”

Local symmetries and order-disorder transitions in small macroscopic Wigner islands

“…Many efforts have been intended in past years to understand properties of mesoscopic devices in which interacting particles are confined. For instance, these particles can be vortices in mesoscopic shaped superconductors [1] [2], electrons in quantum dots [3], strongly coupled rf dusty plasma [4], trapped cooled ions [5], vortices in superfluid He4 [6], electron dimples on a liquid helium surface [7], vortices in a Bose-Einstein condensate [8] or colloidal particles [9]. More recently, in order to take advantage of the macroscopic scale to explore the properties of such systems, we have proposed a new macroscopic system consisting of N interacting charged balls of millimetric size free to move on a plane conductor and confined electrostatically, the temperature being simulated by a mechanical shaking [10].…”