Experiments on Plasma Crystals and Long-range Correlations

Abstract

The first experiments on complex plasma condensation into dust plasma crystals are [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. The physical explanation of the condensation takes into account general physical conditions met in the experiments. One can also use general features of a complex plasma as a state of matter described in details above as well as the new types of the grain attraction, collective and non-collective. Except general concepts, the detailed theory of the complex-plasma phase transition does not exist and the detailed investigation of the grain-grain interaction is still required both experimentally and theoretically. There are many steps to be done after fixing the nature of the pair grain interaction in order to obtain a complete theory of phase transitions in a complex plasma. From a general point of view, it is even difficult to introduce the concept of free energy (which is widely used in the theory of phase transitions in the ordinary matter) to begin with theoretical description of phase transitions in complex plasmas.KeywordsPair Correlation FunctionOrientational OrderPlasma SheathComplex PlasmaDust SizeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.