Laser-excited shear waves in solid and liquid two-dimensional dusty plasmas

Abstract

The propagation of transverse waves in a two-dimensional particle suspension in a plasma is studied in the solid and liquid phase. The different states of the suspension are realized by raising the kinetic temperature of the dust particles with a new laser method. An additional laser beam is used to excite shear waves and the wave is observed by videomicroscopy in terms of the individual velocities of the dust particles. For recovering the spatial wave patterns the method of singular value decomposition is applied and compared with the method of spatial Fourier analysis of complex wave numbers. In the solid phase, weakly damped waves are found which follow the expected dispersion relation. In the liquid phase the existence of strongly damped waves is demonstrated. The real part of the wave number is in overall agreement with the predictions of the Quasi Localized Charge Approximation model for a two-dimensional system. The damping of the waves is discussed.