Development of multipurpose Dusty Plasma Devices for studying UV photoionization of dust, laser based diagnostics development and dust transport.

The ionization of a neutral gas produces plasma, the fourth state of matter and micron sized solid particles embedded in a plasma gives rise to the phenomena of dusty plasmas. Among various plasma production mechanisms, capacitively coupled plasmas (CCP), relevant to dusty plasma studies, can typically be created by radio frequency (rf) and DC discharges. In this project, we show the development of multipurpose rf and DC plasma devices for a variety of different dusty plasma experiments such as ultraviolet (UV) photoionization studies on levitated dust particles, as a target chamber to test novel laser based non-perturbative dusty plasma relevant diagnostics, and to pursue dust transport studies.