Effect of dust clouds on wave propagation characteristics in unmagnetized and weakly magnetized plasmas

The presence and role of charged dust particles in the space environment such as structures in the dust tails of comets, radial structures ("spokes") in Saturn's rings, flowing magnetized dust clouds that might modify the interplanetary magnetic fields etc., is well known but hard to investigate. Scaled laboratory experiments to study the role of magnetized and unmagnetized dust clouds and their effect on the background plasma and low frequency (f < fci) plasma waves are being pursued at the Magnetized Plasma Research Laboratory (MPRL) at Auburn University (AU). This presentation will show preliminary results of the effect of dust clouds of various sizes on the propagation characteristics of plasma fluctuations in both unmagnetized and weakly magnetized plasmas. Multiple probes to launch electrostatic waves of varying frequencies and to detect both the parallel and perpendicular components of the fluctuating electric field have been used to detect the effects of the dust clouds. This experiment is being designed to be compatible with the high magnetic fields (up to 4 T) of the Magnetized Dusty Plasma eXperiment (MDPX) at AU, to be able to study wave propagation in strongly magnetized plasmas and magnetized dust.