2-D Dust Configurations within a Glass Box Potential in Low-Temperature Complex Plasmas

Employing a glass box to provide boundary conditions within a complex plasma serves as a unique method for applying a variable horizontal Coulomb force to particles in low-temperature dusty plasma experiments. The resulting “flat” confinement region [Kong 2013] permits the formation of various configurations at multiple combinations of powers, pressures, and temperatures which take the form of 1-D vertical chains, 2-D vertical zig-zag chains, 2-D horizontal structures and 3-D lattices depending on particle count. This presentation will report on a novel particle pair rotation discovered in a 2-D horizontal dust configuration. An analysis of the experiment will be given and what these observations mean for the forces within the glass box potential will be discussed.

The authors gratefully acknowledge support for this work from DOE Award No. 103014