Dynamics of compressional Mach cones in a strongly coupled complex plasma

TL;DR

This study investigates how strong coupling affects the behavior of Mach cones in dusty plasmas, revealing structural changes, amplitude variations, and cone angle modifications due to increased fluid compressibility.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized hydrodynamic model to analyze the impact of strong coupling on Mach cone dynamics in complex plasmas, highlighting structural and amplitude changes.

Findings

Lateral wake structures change significantly in the strongly coupled regime.

Peak dust density perturbation varies non-monotonically with compressibility.

Cone opening angle decreases as medium compressibility increases.

Abstract

Using a Generalised-Hydrodynamic (GH) fluid model we study the influence of strong coupling induced modification of the fluid compressibility on the dynamics of compressional Mach cones in a dusty plasma medium. A significant structural change of lateral wakes for a given Mach number and Epstein drag force is found in the strongly coupled regime. With the increase of fluid compressibility, the peak amplitude of the normalised perturbed dust density first increases and then decreases monotonically after reaching its maximum value. It is also noticed that the opening angle of the cone structure decreases with the increase of the compressibility of the medium and the arm of the Mach cone breaks up into small structures in the velocity vector profile when the coupling between the dust particles increases.