Anisotropic shear melting and recrystallization of a two-dimensional complex (dusty) plasma

Abstract

A two-dimensional plasma crystal was melted by suddenly applying localized shear stress. A stripe of particles in the crystal was pushed by the radiation pressure force of a laser beam. We found that the response of the plasma crystal to stress and the eventual shear melting depended strongly on the crystal's angular orientation relative to the laser beam. Shear stress and strain rate were measured, from which the spatially resolved shear viscosity was calculated. The latter was shown to have minima in the regions with high velocity shear, thus demonstrating shear thinning. Shear-induced reordering was observed in the steady-state flow, where particles formed strings aligned in the flow direction.

7 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Physical Review E

References in corpus (4)

• Dynamics of lane formation in driven binary complex plasmas
• Supersonic dislocations observed in a plasma crystal
• Evolution of shear-induced melting in dusty plasma
• Microstructure of a liquid complex (dusty) plasma under shear

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Collective effects in vortex movements in complex (dusty) plasmas
• Slow plastic creep of 2D dusty plasma solids
• Three-dimensional structure of a string-fluid complex plasma
• Shear flow in a three-dimensional complex plasma in microgravity conditions
• Resolving structural transitions in spherical dust clusters
• Buckling of 2D Plasma Crystals with Non-reciprocal Interactions
• Dispersion relation of square lattice waves in a two-dimensional binary complex plasma
• Experiment and model for a Stokes layer in a strongly coupled dusty plasma
• Heat transport in a flowing complex plasma in microgravity conditions