Measurement of the speed of sound by observation of the Mach cones in a complex plasma under microgravity conditions
arXiv:1411.7641 · doi:10.1063/1.4907221
Abstract
We report the first observation of the Mach cones excited by a larger microparticle (projectile) moving through a cloud of smaller microparticles (dust) in a complex plasma with neon as a buffer gas under microgravity conditions. A collective motion of the dust particles occurs as propagation of the contact discontinuity. The corresponding speed of sound was measured by a special method of the Mach cone visualization. The measurement results are incompatible with the theory of ion acoustic waves. The estimate for the pressure in a strongly coupled Coulomb system and a scaling law for the complex plasma make it possible to derive an evaluation for the speed of sound, which is in a reasonable agreement with the experiments in complex plasmas.
5 pages, 2 figures, 1 table
References in corpus (1)
Cited by in corpus (4)
- Density distribution of a dust cloud in three-dimensional complex plasmas
- Theory of a cavity around a large floating sphere in complex (dusty) plasma
- Penetration of a supersonic particle at the interface in a binary complex plasma
- Ionization equation of state for the dusty plasma including the effect of ion--atom collisions