Diagnostics on Complex (Dusty) Plasmas: A Comprehensive Survey

Kurzfassung

“Dusty plasmas" are plasmas including particles of nanometer to micrometer sizes as additional charged plasma component. They can be found almost everywhere - in the interstellar medium, in star and planet formation, in the solar system in the Earth's atmosphere and in the laboratory. In the latter case there is great interest in industrial processes (e.g. etching, vapor deposition) and at the fundamental physics level - the main topic here - the study of strong coupling phenomena. Here the dust (or microparticles) is the dominant component of a multi-species plasma. The term “complex plasmas” is widely used in the literature to distinguish dusty plasmas specially “designed” for such fundamental investigations of processes in strongly coupled systems. The particles can be observed in real time and space, individually resolved at all relevant length and time scales. This provides an unprecedented means for studying self-organization processes in many particle systems including the onset of cooperative phenomena. The paper will review the special properties of the diagnosis of complex plasmas, a very interdisciplinary field combining plasma physics with liquid and solid state physics. The spectrum of particle observations ranges from single particles to large dust clouds. It starts with single particles acting like a probe for the surrounding plasma to diagnose e.g. the sheath, where the particles are levitated. It continues with collective effects like the dust acoustic wave and other wave phenomena and finally ends with observations of strongly coupled phenomena in the liquid and crystal regime.