Wake-induced bending of two-dimensional plasma crystals

TL;DR

This paper investigates how wake-mediated interactions cause bending in 2D plasma crystals, affecting their shape and particle levitation heights, and suggests using this effect to analyze interparticle forces.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical analysis of wake-induced bending in plasma crystals and proposes a method to infer interparticle interaction characteristics from observed shape deformations.

Findings

The crystal shape becomes non-flat due to wake effects.

Particles in the center levitate lower than at the edges.

The shape depends on particle density distribution.

Abstract

It is shown that the wake-mediated interactions between microparticles in a two-dimensional plasma crystal affect the shape of the monolayer, making it non-flat. The equilibrium shape is calculated for various distributions of the particle number density in the monolayer. For typical experimental conditions, the levitation height of particles in the center of the crystal can be noticeably smaller than at the periphery. It is suggested that the effect of wake-induced bending can be utilized in experiments, to deduce important characteristics of the interparticle interaction.