From a charged particle to basic thermodynamics

It's almost 30 years ago that plasma crystals have been discovered. Since then the field of dusty plasma has made significant progress and many fundamental processes in strongly coupled systems have been observed and analyzed. During the past few years a number of new and powerful diagnostics have been developed which enable measurements on a new level with respect to precision and thus allow us to tackle problems which where inaccessible before. This talk starts with an introduction to light scattering at a single particle and how this can be utilized to determine particle size, particle charge and other particle properties [1]. It thus addresses an old but still unsolved problem in plasma physics: floating objects in a non-collisionless flowing plasma environment. The second part of the talk will focus on many particles systems and how thermodynamic approaches like configurational temperature [2] and thermal motion can be used for advanced diagnostics. It is shown that even entropy can be measured directly [3,4,5].

[1] https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0071904

[2] https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.104.045205

[3] https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.225001

[4] https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5078561

[5] https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys4253