Effect of ionization waves on dust chain formation in a DC discharge

Abstract

An interesting aspect of complex plasma is its ability to self-organize into a variety of structural configurations and undergo transitions between these states. A striking phenomenon is the isotropic-to-string transition observed in electrorheological complex plasma under the influence of a symmetric ion wakefield. Such transitions have been investigated using the Plasma Kristall-4 (PK-4) microgravity laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS). Recent experiments and numerical simulations have shown that, under PK-4 relevant discharge conditions, the seemingly homogeneous DC discharge column is highly inhomogeneous, with large axial electric field oscillations associated with ionization waves occurring on microsecond time scales. A multi-scale numerical model of the dust-plasma interactions is employed to investigate the role of the electric field on the charge of individual dust grains, the ion wakefield, and the order of string-like structures. Results are compared to dust strings formed in similar conditions in the PK-4 experiment.

18 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Dynamics of lane formation in driven binary complex plasmas
• Dust as probes: determining confinement and interaction forces
• Interaction force in a vertical dust chain inside a glass box

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Influence of Temporal Variations in Plasma Conditions on the Electric Potential Near Self-Organized Dust Chains
• Evolution of Ion Wake Characteristics with Experimental Conditions
• Experiments and modeling of dust particle heating resulting from changes in polarity switching in the PK-4 microgravity laboratory
• Sparse identification of effective microparticle interaction potential in dusty plasma from simulation data