Effect of magnetic field on the wave dispersion relation in three-dimensional dusty plasma crystals

Abstract

Three-dimensional plasma crystals under microgravity condition are investigated by taking into account an external magnetic field. The wave dispersion relations of dust lattice modes in the body centered cubic (bcc) and the face centered cubic (fcc) plasma crystals are obtained explicitly when the magnetic field is perpendicular to the wave motion. The wave dispersion relations of dust lattice modes in the bcc and fcc plasma crystals are calculated numerically when the magnetic field is in an arbitrary direction. The numerical results show that one longitudinal mode and two transverse modes are coupled due to the Lorentz force in the magnetic field. Moreover, three wave modes, i.e., the high frequency phonon mode, the low frequency phonon mode, and the optical mode, are obtained. The optical mode and at least one phonon mode are hybrid modes. When the magnetic field is neither parallel nor perpendicular to the primitive wave motion, all the three wave modes are hybrid modes and do not have any intersection points. It is also found that with increasing the magnetic field strength, the frequency of the optical mode increases and has a cutoff at the cyclotron frequency of the dust particles in the limit of long wavelength, and the mode mixings for both the optical mode and the high frequency phonon mode increase. The acoustic velocity of the low frequency phonon mode is zero. In addition, the acoustic velocity of the high frequency phonon mode depends on the angle of the magnetic field and the wave motion but does not depend on the magnetic field strength.