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Recent studies of dusty plasma structures formed by polydispersed CeO2 particles in a dc glow discharge at a temperature T > 1.6 K were shown to be the first experiments on dusty plasma in an exotic dark glow discharge mode. The properties of cryogenic helium plasmas at T ~ 1 K are summarized and discussed.

We observed the appearance of a broad feature at 360 nm in spectra obtained during the destruction of ensembles of molecular nitrogen nanoclusters containing stabilized nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and deuterium atoms. We attribute this broad feature with a maximum at 360 nm to the N4 polynitrogen molecules which are the product of the neutralization reaction of ions with electrons in solid N2.

We describe a method for creating a high flux beam of cold atoms and molecules. By using this beam method, spectroscopic studies of the afterglow of oxygen-helium gas mixtures at cryogenic temperatures were performed. The cooling by helium vapor of a helium jet containing trace amounts of oxygen after passing through a radiofrequency discharge zone led to the observation of strong emissions from atomic oxygen. The effect results from the increased efficiency of energy transfer from metastable helium atoms and molecules to the atomic oxygen in the cold dense helium vapor. The effect might find application for the detection of small quantities of impurities in helium gas as well as possible laser action.

Impurity-Helium condensates (IHCs) containing krypton and hydrogen atoms have been studied in superfluid helium-4 via CW ESR techniques. The IHCs studied in this work are gel-like aggregates of nanoclusters composed of krypton and hydrogen atoms. We have found that such samples contain very high average concentrations of hydrogen atoms (~1018cm-3) as obtained by integration of the microwave absorption signal. Local concentrations (~1019cm-3) of H atoms were calculated from the ESR line width. Detailed studies of the ESR line shapes lead to the conclusion that a large fraction of the H atoms lies on the krypton cluster surfaces.