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Chains of charged dust particles are observed aligned with a subsonic ion flow. These chains are found in dilute regions, near the midplane of a parallel-plate radio-frequency plasma under microgravity conditions. The argon ion flow speed near these chains was estimated to be of order 102 m/s, corresponding to an ion acoustic Mach number M < 0.1. The chains were observed to be stable in both the longitudinal and transverse directions. This stability suggests that there is a transverse restoring force. The transverse components of the ion-drag force or electrostatic wake-field forces could provide such a stabilizing effect. The chain appears to terminate with a final dust particle that is located in a dilute region; this observation suggests a possible attractive force in the longitudinal direction in the presence of a subsonic ion flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent investigations of dust-density waves in a dusty plasma under microgravity conditions [ K. O. Menzel et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 104 235002 (2010)] showed that the wave field consists of distinct regions of different frequencies. These so-called frequency clusters are known from simulations of chains of mutually coupled van der Pol oscillators. The behavior of distinct oscillators adjacent to the cluster boundaries were studied numerically. The interaction of these oscillators leads to periodic frequency pulling, a typical feature of driven van der Pol oscillators that is also observed in our experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The penetration of a projectile into a strongly coupled dusty plasma was studied in a radio-frequency discharge under microgravity conditions. A supersonic projectile produces an elongated dust-free cavity in its wake. The dynamics of the cavity is analyzed and compared with Langevin dynamics simulations. Besides a three-dimensional Mach cone structure, the simulation shows that the cavity dynamics can be subdivided into three phases: An opening phase with fixed time scale, a closing phase, whose duration is affected by the projectile speed and, finally, a phase of particle realignment in the target cloud, which persists for a long time after the closure of the cavity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Density waves in a dusty plasma emerge spontaneously at low gas pressures and high dust densities. These acousticlike wave modes were studied in a radio-frequency discharge under microgravity conditions. The complex three-dimensional wave pattern shows a spatially varying wavelength that leads to bifurcations, i.e., topological defects, where wave fronts split or merge. The calculation of instantaneous wave attributes from the spatiotemporal evolution of the dust density allows a precise analysis of those structures. Investigations of the spatial frequency distribution inside the wave field revealed that the wave frequency decreases from the bulk to the edge of the cloud in terms of frequency jumps. Between those jumps, regions of almost constant frequency appear. The formation of frequency clusters is strongly correlated with defects that occur exclusively at the cluster boundaries. It is shown that the nonlinearity of the waves has a significant influence on the topology of the wave pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]