[1] Saturn’s rings, terrestrial polar mesospheric clouds, and astrophysical molecular clouds are all dusty plasma environments where tiny grains of water ice are an important constituent. Existing models typically assume that the ice grains are spherical and then invoke various arguments about the normal distribution or the power law dependence of grain number density on grain radius. Using a l...

Introduction Plasmas with dust grains are of interest both for the cosmic space as well as for the laboratory plasmas. Examples include cometary environments, planetary rings, the interstellar medium, the Earth’s and other planets magnetospheres [1]. Dust has been found to be a determinant component of rarefied plasmas used in the microelectronic processing industry [2], and it may also be pres...

The dispersion properties and excitation mechanisms of ‘dipole oscillons’ in a dusty plasma containing charged elongated rod-like dust grains are investigated in the presence of streaming plasma particles for cases without and with an external static magnetic field. In a magnetized dusty plasma, a new ‘oscillon-ion lower-hybrid’ mode is found, which can be excited by the equilibrium energy of c...

The effect of an external magnetic field on a critical point for phase transitions in a dusty plasma is investigated. It is shown that the ambient magnetic field increases the effective hard core radius of dust particles, which, in turn, would affect a critical point in terms of the Coulomb coupling parameter and the ratio between the inter-dust grain spacing and the dusty plasma Debye radius. ...

A review is presented of recent experiments performed on the University of Iowa DC discharge dusty plasma device on various aspects of dust acoustic waves. A brief introduction to the physics of dusty plasmas and the dust acoustic wave is first presented. Three experiments are then described: (i) observation and interpretation of large amplitude (nonlinear) dust acoustic waves; (ii) evolution o...

A strongly-coupled plasma is a collection of free charged particles that interact with a Coulomb repulsion that is so strong that nearby particles do not easily move past one another. Unlike weakly-coupled plasmas, strongly-coupled plasmas exhibit a self-organization of particles into an arrangement like a solid crystalline lattice or a liquid. Dusty plasmas consist of micron-size particles of ...

Structure formation and wave phenomena in moderately coupled dusty plasmas." PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) thesis, ABSTRACT Dusty plasmas, defined as plasmas of ions, electrons, neutrals, and charged micron to sub-micron dust particles, support a rich diversity of physical states. These states (ranging from solids to liquids to gas) are determined by the ratio of the Coulomb potential energy betwe...

Diagnostic methods are developed to measure the microparticle charge Q and two plasma parameters, electron temperature Te, and ion density ni, in the main plasma region of a dusty plasma. Using video microscopy to track microparticles yields a resonance frequency, which along with a charging model allows an estimation of Q and Te. Only measurements of microparticle position and velocity are req...