Speaker
Description
Complex plasmas have proven a versatile analog for the study of soft matter systems, particularly those whose global behavior is determined by the combined effect of the particles’ low kinetic energy, interparticle interactions mediated by the streaming ion flow and local confinement forces. On Earth, the streaming ion flow plays a major role in shaping the interparticle interaction and in turn the overall particle alignment. However, the effects of the ion flow are in general much weaker than other system forces and usually masked by gravity for terrestrial experiments. The Plasma Kristall-4 (PK-4) experiment currently in operation on the International Space Station (ISS) provides a microgravity environment which avoids this issue. This talk will discuss the underlying physics behind the formation of the extended particle chains observed in the PK-4 ISS system. Data from the PK-4 ISS will be compared to data collected from the PK-4-B device at Baylor and to numerical simulations of the complex plasma, dust charging and plasma-dust interactions.
Support from NASA Grant number 1571701 and NSF Grant numbers 174023 and 1707215 is gratefully acknowledged.
