Abstract
The static and dynamical properties of two-dimensionalmesoscopic clusters of equally charged classical particles areinvestigated through the Monte Carlo simulation technique. Theparticles are confined by an external harmonic potential. Theground-state configuration and the position of the geometryinduced defects are investigated as a function of theinter-particle interaction (Coulomb, dipole, logarithmic andscreened Coulomb). The eigenmodes are investigated and thecorresponding divergence and rotor are calculated whichdescribe the `shearlike' and `compression-like' modes,respectively. The melting behaviour is found to be stronglyinfluenced by the inter-particle interaction potential: a smallcluster with a short-range interaction melts earlier than one with long-range interaction. The melting temperature isrelated to the energy barriers between the ground state and themetastable states. For larger clusters, the melting scenariochanges and is strongly influenced by the location of thetopological defects.
Highlights
Complex plasmas consist of many strongly charged dust particles immersed in a gaseous plasma background
Unlike most ordinary plasmas in space and laboratory which are weakly coupled, i.e. the interaction energy of nearest neighbours is much smaller than their thermal energy, a complex plasma is strongly coupled
The competition between the order caused by the mutual Coulomb interactions and the disorder caused by random thermal motion of particles leads to different states ranging from a solid crystal phase to a liquid phase
Summary
Complex plasmas consist of many strongly charged dust particles immersed in a gaseous plasma background. Nowadays one refers to it as complex plasma in analogy to the condensed matter field of âcomplex fluidsâ in colloids This system has four components, i.e. electrons, ions, neutral atoms and dust particles with high charges which are responsible for the unusual plasma properties. As a model system one uses a many-body Coulomb system in which charged particles are confined by an external potential This model system was initially studied by Thomson as a classical model for the atom [8] where a small number of electrons are embedded in a uniform neutralizing ion background, which generated the parabolic confining potential. In the first part of the present paper, the ground state and the metastable state configurations for the Yukawa system are obtained and compared with the results of a Coulomb, dipole and logarithmic interacting system.
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