Crystallization dynamics of a single layer complex plasma

Abstract

We report a series of complex (dusty) plasma experiments, aimed at the study of the detailed time evolution of the re-crystallisation process following a rapid quench of a two dimensional dust liquid. The experiments were accompanied by large-scale (million particle) molecular dynamics simulations, assuming Yukawa type inter-particle interaction. Both experiment and simulation show a $\propto t^{\alpha }$ (power law) dependence of the linear crystallite domain size as measured by the bond-order correlation length, translational correlation length, dislocation (defect) density, and a direct size measurement algorithm. The results show two stages of order formation: on short time-scales individual particle motion dominates; this is a fast process characterized by $\alpha =0.93\pm 0.1$. At longer time-scales, small crystallites undergo collective rearrangement, merging into bigger ones, resulting in a smaller exponent $\alpha =0.38\pm 0.06$.

4 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to PRL

References in corpus (5)

• Superdiffusion and non-Gaussian statistics in a driven-dissipative 2D dusty plasma
• Accurate particle position measurement from images
• Dynamical correlations and collective excitations of Yukawa liquids
• Evolution of shear-induced melting in dusty plasma
• Dislocation Glasses: Aging during Relaxation and Coarsening

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Abnormal subgrain growth in a dislocation-based model of recovery