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Shocks propagate in a 2D dusty plasma with less attenuation than due to gas friction alone
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Shocks propagate in a 2D dusty plasma with less attenuation than due to gas friction alone

Anton Kananovich and J. Goree
Physics of plasmas, Vol.27(11), p.113704
11/2020
DOI: 10.1063/5.0016504
url
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0016504View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

In a dusty plasma, an impulsively generated shock, i.e., blast wave, was observed to decay less than would be expected due to gas friction alone. In the experiment, a single layer of microparticles was levitated in a radio frequency glow-discharge plasma. In this layer, the microparticles were self-organized as a 2D solid-like strongly coupled plasma, which was perturbed by the piston-like mechanical movement of a wire. To excite a blast wave, the wire's motion was abruptly stopped, so that the input of mechanical energy ceased at a known time. It was seen that, as it propagated across the layer, the blast wave's amplitude persisted with little decay. This result extends similar findings, in previous experiments with 3D microparticle clouds, to the case of 2D clouds. In our cloud, out-of-plane displacements were observed, lending support to the possibility that an instability, driven by wakes in the ion flow, provides energy that sustains the blast wave's amplitude despite the presence of gas damping.

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