Plasma crystals: experiments and simulation

Abstract

Dusty plasmas are a well accessible system to study crystallization of charged-particle systems at room temperature. The large mass compared to atomic particles dramatically slows down the particle velocities. The high transparency of the system allows to trace simultaneously the motion of all particles with quasi-atomic resolution. After a brief overview, the progress in this field is exemplified by studies of spherical three-dimensional plasma crystals, the so-called Yukawa balls. The static structure and eigenmodes are explained in simple terms. It is shown that shielding modifies the expansion of a Yukawa ball from a self-similar explosion to a continuous ablation process that starts at the surface. The experimental progress with three-dimensional diagnostics and laser heating and sophisticated methods for visualising the order inside the shell structure are described. Together with quantifying the diffusion coefficient these investigations reveal the details of the solid-liquid phase transition. Besides thermodynamic aspects, the liquid phase of dusty plasmas also gives access to hydrodynamic phenomena at the individual particle scale.