Abstract
Complex plasmas, i.e., low-temperature plasmas containing suspensions of solid microparticles, exhibit electrorheological properties which are manifested by the formation of stringlike clusters (SLCs) in microgravity experiments. It is thought that SLCs form due to a long-range effective attraction between the particles under the influence of a directed ion flow. We performed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of negatively charged microparticles with positive model wakes to mimic the effect of ion flow in experiments, and achieved SLC formation without long-range attraction between the microparticles. We show that long-range-reduced repulsion was enough to obtain the SLCs similar to the experiments and found that the simulations with the long-range attraction became unstable due to particle accelerations. Destruction and recrystallization of the stringlike structure was also studied experimentally using the Plasmakristall-4 facility on board the International Space Station, and the experimental findings were compared to those from three–dimensional MD simulations. We found excellent qualitative agreement between simulation and experiment when recrystallization was simulated using an interparticle potential without effective long-range attraction.
- Received 21 January 2022
- Revised 29 November 2022
- Accepted 16 January 2023
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L012030
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
synopsis
Stringy Particles in Complex Plasmas
Published 2 March 2023
Simulations and an experiment aboard the International Space Station show that changes in the system’s repulsive forces are behind the alignment of particles embedded in an electrified plasma.
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