Study of the Dusty-Gas Discharge Plasma in the Plasma Crystal-3 Plus Space Laboratory
A. M. Lipaev, V. I. Molotkov†, D. I. Zhukhovitskii, V. N. Naumkin, A. D. Usachev, A. V. Zobnin, O. F. Petrov, and V. E. Fortov
Joint Institute of High Temperatures,
Russian Academy of Sciences,
Izhorskaya ul. 13, Bd. 2, Moscow, 125412 Russia
Abstract—The main results of a completed cycle of complex studies of a strongly coupled dusty plasma conducted in the unique, experimental Plasma Crystal-3 Plus space laboratory that operated on the International Space Station are discussed. The experiments on the physics of phenomena in the dusty plasma are analyzed. A new state of dusty plasma, the electrorheological plasma, in which there is a transition from an isotropic plasma-dusty liquid to an anisotropic state, is studied. The study of the interpenetration of particles streams of various diameters, a nonequilibrium transition, is described. Experimental studies of the liquid–crystal phase transition in a three-dimensional dusty plasma system in which it is established that the dust component is compressed and crystallized upon a decrease in the neutral gas pressure are discussed. The nearly free motion of large particles in the volume of a plasma crystal, a nonviscous, irrotational flow about a large particle by a “liquid” of small dust particles, is analyzed. An experimental study of the dynamics of the crystallization of three-dimensional plasma-dust systems at a constant argon pressure under the effect of a low-frequency, alternating electric field and without its influence under microgravity conditions is described. The formation of the crystallization front and its propagation in the three-dimensional plasma-dust system with a velocity on the order of the average interparticle distance per second were discovered.