Structure and dynamics of dust in streaming plasma: dust molecules, strings, and Crystals

Nonlinear collisionless plasma wakes of small particles

“…The peak potential was fitted to be 21mV (in a T e = 3eV plasma). They found that for large vertical separations the particles' horizontal equilibrium positions became offset from perfect vertical alignment by angles as small as ∼ 15 o which is not explicable by the analysis of ref [19]. The work reported here uses a PIC code in three dimensions to calculate the entire wake structure in a collisionless plasma behind spherical particles of a whole range of charges and sizes (smaller than λ De ).…”

“…Since [7] gives only approximate forms, and [12] deals only with charge rods, the remaining possible quantitative comparison with theory appears to be with the work of Lampe et al in [11]. (The plots of [19] appear qualitatively consistent but include collisions, which are here omitted.) Figure 11: Comparison of potential along theẑ-axis of flow.…”

“…Alignment angles to the vertical less than 45 o were not observed. The (linear response) theory of Lampe et al [19] for like particles in confining wells indicates that anharmonic (steep wall) well structure is required but can then explain oblique alignment. Recently Kroll et al [20] have observed return transitions to vertical alignment from metastable oblique alignment states that again have angles no less than 45 o for like particles.…”

Dynamic Light Scattering on Complex Plasmas

“…The anisotropy of the plasma conditions in the plasma-wall sheath leads to instabilities that are responsible for the extreme heating of the dust particle component [5,6,7,8,9].…”

“…The observations on phase transitions will be compared to the predictions of theory, in particular to the theoretical description and simulations by Joyce and Ganguli et al [7,8,9]. This work is organized as follows: Chapter 2 gives an introduction into the DLS theory.…”