Phase Coupling in the Dust Acoustic Wave

A dusty plasma is a four-component plasma system consisting of ions, electrons, neutral particles and charged microparticles. The microparticle component interacts with the other plasma components, acquires a net charge and self-consistently modifies the surrounding plasma medium. The resulting system is notably more complex than the traditional plasma system and supports a wide range of physical phenomena, including a wave mode known dust acoustic wave; a low-frequency, longitudinal mode that propagates through the dust component of the dusty plasma system and is believed to be self-excited by the ions streaming through the dust component. One observation from the early studies of this wave mode is the potential existence of wave turbulence and recent studies have shown that the naturally occurring dust acoustic wave will synchronize to an external drive can occur under the appropriate experimental conditions. Bicoherence has been identified as a potential tool to identify the presence of intermittency and turbulence. This presentation will focus on the application of bicoherence analysis to study the nonlinear interaction between wave modes in the dust acoustic wave in waves response to an externally applied drive at one or two sinusoidal frequencies.