Spatio-temporal dynamics of confined filaments in magnetized plasmas in the MDPX device

The Magnetized Dusty Plasma eXperiment (MDPX) is a unique apparatus capable of generating steady-state, magnetic fields up to 3.5 T for the study of low temperature plasmas and dusty plasmas. For B ≥ 1 T, radio frequency, capacitively-coupled plasmas can form coherent, field-aligned structures known as "filaments". These structures disrupt the uniform plasma background and can significantly perturb dusty plasma experiments. Previous work [1] correlated the trends of spatial morphology with the ion Hall parameter (i.e., ratio of ion cyclotron to ion-neutral collision frequencies). Recent investigations confine single or multiple filaments through the use of copper rings placed on the bottom electrode. This work implements a series of confinement experiments resulting in a controlled ion Hall parameter scan to classify various types of spatio-temporal filament dynamics, including translation, rotation, mode transformation, splitting, and recombination. A robust tracking and characterization algorithm using Python and OpenCV library has been developed to study the complex dynamics of the filaments. Preliminary analysis implies a strong correlation between neutral gas pressure with the rate of filament formation, lifetime, as well as spatial uniformity.