Dust particle probing the plasma sheath in a glass box with variable electrode temperature

Dusty plasmas, low-temperature plasmas in which solid particles are present, are relevant to both fundamental physics research and emerging technologies. Micrometer-sized dust particles are typically negatively charged in plasma and levitate in the sheath where the electric field counters gravity. Under specific conditions, dust particles form ordered structures, enabling the study of low-dimensional transport phenomena and phase transitions on observable time- and length-scales. A specific area of interest is one-dimensional vertical dust particle chains. These chains form at low plasma power inside a glass box placed on top of the lower electrode of a GEC RF reference cell, where the overlapping sheaths inside the glass box have not yet been fully characterized experimentally. The experiments presented here employ a single microparticle as a probe of the plasma sheath, allowing the effect of heating and cooling the lower electrode to be investigated. The results lead to an increased understanding of the confinement provided by the glass box, which is crucial when analyzing experiments or simulations of more complicated dust structures in the same environment.