The Effect of Dust Clouds on the Transmission of Electrostatic Perturbations Across Weakly Magnetized and Unmagnetized Plasmas

The presence and role of charged dust in plasmas in the space environment, such as dust structures in the tails of comets or flowing magnetized dust clouds that can affect the interplanetary magnetic field are well known yet hard to investigate. Scaled experiments allow the opportunity to investigate the physics of these exotic systems as well as provide guidance to the development of future spacecraft missions. These experiments are being pursued to investigate the impact of charged dust clouds on the background plasma in the presence of driven low frequency (f ~ 10-1500 Hz < fci) electrostatic perturbations in unmagnetized and weakly magnetized plasmas using the Magnetized Dusty Plasma eXperiment (MDPX) at Auburn University. This presentation will show preliminary results on the effects dust clouds have on the transmission of electrostatic perturbations in both unmagnetized and weakly magnetized plasmas. This is accomplished using a single tip Langmuir probe to drive low frequency perturbations while single and triple tip probes detect the fluctuations in plasma. This experiment has been conducted with various driven frequencies, magnetic fields and spatial separations between the transmitting and receiving probes.