Molecular dynamics study of crystal formation and structural phase transition in Yukawa system for dusty plasma medium

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to explore how layered crystal structures form and transition between different lattice types in dusty plasma mediums with Yukawa interactions, influenced by external fields.

Contribution

It provides detailed insights into the formation, structural properties, and phase transitions of crystalline layers in dusty plasma modeled with Yukawa interactions, including reentrant phase behavior.

Findings

Layered crystal structures form under combined gravitational and electric fields.

Structural phase transitions from hexagonal to square lattices are observed.

Reentrant phase transition from hexagonal to square and rhombic structures occurs.

Abstract

The layered crystal formation in dusty plasma medium depicted by the Yukawa interaction amidst dust has been investigated using Molecular Dynamics simulations. The multilayer structures are shown to form in the presence of a combined gravitational and external electric field force (representing the sheath field in experiments) along the ^ z direction. A detailed study of the dependence of the number of crystal layer formation, their width etc., on various system parameters (viz., the external field profile and the screening length of Yukawa interaction) have been analyzed. The structural properties of crystalline bilayers have been studied in detail identifying their structures with the help of pair correlation function and Voronoi diagrams. It has been shown that the crystalline layers undergo structural phase transition from hexagonal (often also referred as triangular ) to square lattice configurations. A reentrant phase transition from hexagonal to square (and rhombic) structure has been observed in the simulations.