1. Effects of the System Temperature on Dust Cluster Formation in Plasma.
- Author
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Song, Y. L., Huang, F., Chen, Z. Y., Liu, Y. H., Yu, M. Y., Chen, K. F., and Wang, L.
- Subjects
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DUSTY plasmas , *GAS phase reactions , *MOLECULAR dynamics , *MEAN square algorithms , *SIMULATION methods & models - Abstract
Effects of the system temperature on dust aggregation in plasmas are investigated using two-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations. It is shown that as the system temperature increases, the boundary of the clusters becomes gradually irregular (i.e., deviating from sphere-like), and the cluster system gradually changes from solid to liquid and finally to gas state. The mean square displacement, mean nearest-neighbor distance in the clusters, cluster size and coupling parameter of the system are obtained and the properties of the system structure and dynamics are investigated. The time τ needed for reaching equilibrium for different temperatures is obtained. It is shown that τ firstly decreases and then increases with the temperature, indicating that there is an optimum temperature allowing a dust aggregation to reach an equilibrium state most rapidly. The simulation results agree qualitatively with the experimental observations. (© 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
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