Magnetized strongly coupled plasmas and how to realize them in a dusty plasma setup

TL;DR

This paper explores how to realize strongly magnetized, strongly coupled dusty plasmas in laboratory settings by using gas rotation, enabling the study of their unique collective behaviors and properties.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of inducing strong magnetization in dusty plasmas through neutral gas rotation, facilitating experimental investigation of magnetized strongly coupled plasma phenomena.

Findings

Rotation of neutral gas can induce strong effective magnetization in dusty plasmas.

New experimental results for macroscopic 2D systems demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.

Strong modifications in transport and oscillation spectra are observed under induced magnetization.

Abstract

Strongly coupled plasmas in which the interaction energy exceeds the kinetic energy play an important role in many astrophysical and laboratory systems including compact stars, laser plasmas and dusty plasmas. They exhibit many unusual collective properties, such as liquid or crystalline behaviour, peculiar oscillation spectra and transport properties. Recently, strongly coupled plasmas were studied in the presence of a strong magnetic field by computer simulations, and strong modifications of their transport properties and oscillation spectra were observed. While strong magnetization is common in stellar systems it is practically impossible to achieve in complex plasmas due to the large mass of the dust particles. Here we discuss a recently demonstrated approach to achieve very strong "magnetization" by a rotation of the neutral gas, and we present new results for macroscopic two-dimensional systems.