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An interesting aspect of complex plasma is its ability to self-organize into a variety of structural configurations and undergo transitions between these states. A striking phenomenon is the isotropic-to-string transition observed in electrorheological complex plasma under the influence of a symmetric ion wakefield. Such transitions have been investigated using the Plasma Kristall-4 (PK-4) microgravity laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS). Recent experiments and numerical simulations have shown that, under PK-4 relevant discharge conditions, the seemingly homogeneous DC discharge column is highly inhomogeneous, with large axial electric field oscillations associated with ionization waves occurring on microsecond time scales. A multi-scale numerical model of the dust-plasma interactions is employed to investigate the role of the electric field on the charge of individual dust grains, the ion wakefield, and the order of string-like structures. Results are compared to dust strings formed in similar conditions in the PK-4 experiment., Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures

Shear flow in a three-dimensional complex plasma was experimentally studied in microgravity conditions using Plasmakristall-4 (PK-4) instrument on board the International Space Station (ISS). The shear flow was created in an extended suspension of microparticles by applying the radiation pressure force of the manipulation-laser beam. Individual particle trajectories in the flow were analyzed and from these, using the Navier-Stokes equation, an upper estimate of the complex plasma's kinematic viscosity was calculated in the range of $0.2$--$6.7~{\rm mm^2/s}$. This estimate is much lower than previously reported in ground-based experiments with 3D complex plasmas. Possible reasons of this difference are discussed., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

Three-dimensional structure of complex (dusty) plasmas was investigated under long-term microgravity conditions in the International-Space-Station-based Plasmakristall-4 facility. The microparticle suspensions were confined in a polarity-switched dc discharge. The experimental results were compared to the results of the molecular dynamics simulations with the interparticle interaction potential represented as a superposition of isotropic Yukawa and anisotropic quadrupole terms. Both simulated and experimental data exhibited qualitatively similar structural features indicating the bulk liquid-like order with the inclusion of solid-like strings aligned with the axial electric field. Individual strings were identified and their size spectrum was calculated. The decay rate of the size spectrum was found to decrease with the enhancement of string-like structural features.

Inactivation of microorganisms on sensitive surfaces by cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) is one major application in the field of plasma medicine because it provides a simple and effective way to sterilize heat-sensitive materials. Therefore, one has to know whether plasma treatment affects the treated surfaces, and thus causes long-term surface modifications. In this contribution, the effect of cold atmospheric Surface Micro-Discharge (SMD) plasma on different materials and its sporicidal behavior was investigated. Hence, different material samples (stainless steel, different polymers and glass) were plasma-treated for 16 hours, simulating multiple plasma treatments using an SMD plasma device. Afterwards, the material samples were analyzed using surface analysis methods such as laser microscopy, contact angle measurements and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Furthermore, the device was used to investigate the behavior of Bacillus atrophaeus endospores inoculated on material samples at different treatment times. The interaction results for plasma-treated endospores show, that a log reduction of the spore count between 4.3 and 6.2 can be achieved within 15 min of plasma treatment. Besides, the surface analysis revealed, that there were three different types of reactions the probed materials showed to plasma treatment, ranging from no changes to shifts of the materials' free surface energies and oxidation. As a consequence, it should be taken into account that even though cold atmospheric plasma treatment is a non-thermal method to inactivate microorganisms on heatsensitive materials, it still affects surface properties of the treated materials. Therefore, the focus of future work must be a further classification of plasma-caused material modifications., Comment: 14 pages, 15 figures

The charge of microparticles immersed in the dc discharge of the Plasmakristall-4 experimental facility has been estimated using the particle velocities from experiments performed on Earth and under microgravity conditions on the International Space Station. The theoretical model used for these estimates is based on the balance of the forces acting on a single particle in the discharge. The model takes into account the radial dependence of the discharge parameters and describes reasonably well the experimental measurements., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, published in Phys. Plasmas

We report on the observation of the self-excited dust density waves in the dc discharge complex plasma. The experiments were performed under microgravity conditions in the Plasmakristall-4 facility on board the International Space Station. In the experiment, the microparticle cloud was first trapped in an inductively coupled plasma, then released to drift for some seconds in a dc discharge with constant current. After that the discharge polarity was reversed. DC plasma containing a drifting microparticle cloud was found to be strongly non-uniform in terms of microparticle drift velocity and plasma emission in accord with [Zobnin et.al., Phys. Plasmas 25, 033702 (2018)]. In addition to that, non-uniformity in the self-excited wave pattern was observed: In the front edge of the microparticle cloud (defined as head), the waves had larger phase velocity than in the rear edge (defined as tail). Also, after the polarity reversal, the wave pattern exhibited several bifurcations: Between each of the two old wave crests, a new wave crest has formed. These bifurcations, however, occurred only in the head of the microparticle cloud. We show that spatial variations of electric field inside the drifting cloud play an important role in the formation of the wave pattern. Comparison of the theoretical estimations and measurements demonstrate the significant impact of the electric field on the phase velocity of the wave. The same theoretical approach applied to the instability growth rate, showed agreement between estimated and measured values., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

We study the frequency dependencies of the fermion and photon dressing functions in dynamical gap generation in graphene. We use a low energy effective QED-like description, but within this approximation, we include all frequency dependent effects including retardation. We obtain the critical coupling by calculating the gap using a non-perturbative Dyson-Schwinger approach. Compared to the results of our previous calculation [1] which used a Lindhard screening approximation instead of including a self-consistently calculated dynamical screening function, the critical coupling is substantially reduced., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, published version

We study the frequency dependencies in the renormalization of the fermion Greens function for the $\pi$-band electrons in graphene and their influence on the dynamical gap generation at sufficiently strong interaction. Adopting the effective QED-like description for the low-energy excitations within the Dirac-cone region we self consistently solve the fermion Dyson-Schwinger equation in various approximations for the photon propagator and the vertex function with special emphasis on frequency dependent Lindhard screening and retardation effects., Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures

Experiments to explore stability conditions and topology of a dense microparticle cloud supported against gravity by a gas flow were carried out. By using a nozzle shaped glass insert within the glass tube of a dc discharge plasma chamber a weakly ionized gas flow through a de Laval nozzle was produced. The experiments were performed using neon gas at a pressure of 100 Pa and melamine-formaldehyde particles with a diameter of 3.43 {\mu}m. The capturing and stable global confining of the particles behind the nozzle in the plasma were demonstrated. The particles inside the cloud behaved as a single convection cell inhomogeneously structured along the nozzle axis in a tube-like manner. The pulsed acceleration localized in the very head of the cloud mediated by collective plasma-particle interactions and the resulting wave pattern were studied in detail., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

We describe a series of experiments on dust particles flows in a positive column of a horizontal dc discharge operating in laboratory and microgravity conditions. The main observation is that the particle flow velocities in laboratory experiments are systematically higher than in microgravity experiments, for otherwise identical discharge conditions. The paper provides an explanation for this interesting and unexpected observation. The explanation is based on a physical model, which properly takes into account main plasma-particle interaction mechanisms relevant to the described experimental study. Comparison of experimentally measured particle velocities and those calculated using the proposed model demonstrates reasonable agreement, both in laboratory and microgravity conditions, in the entire range of discharge parameters investigated., Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures

The plasma is generated in a low frequency glow discharge within an elongated glass tube oriented vertically. The dust particles added to the plasma are confined above the heater and form counter-rotating clouds close to the tube centre. The shape of the clouds and the velocity field of the conveying dust particles are determined. The forces acting on the particles are calculated. It is shown that convection of the dust is affected by the convective gas motion which is triggered, in turn, by thermal creep of the gas along the inhomogeneously heated walls of the tube., Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett

The force on a microparticle in a complex plasma by streaming ions, the so-called ion drag force, is not well known. However, it is important for the understanding of interesting phenomena in complex plasmas such as the void formation under microgravity conditions. The PK-4 experiment, which is developed for a later use on board of the International Space Station, is ideally suited for investigating this problem. In this experiment a complex DC-plasma is created in a glass tube in which the microparticles flow from the cathode to the anode. Measuring the microparticle velocities, the forces on the particles for different particle sizes, pressures, and DC-currents can be extracted by assuming force balance. Experiments have been performed in the laboratory as well as under microgravity using parabolic flights. The results of these experiments will be presented and compared to theoretical predictions., Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, contribution to the International Conference "Dusty Plasmas in Application" (Odessa, Ukraine, August 25-28, 2004), to be published in Ukranian J. Phys

In the present paper we calculate the dielectric functions of an ultra-relativistic plasma, such as an electron-positron or a quark-gluon plasma. We use classical transport theory and take into account collisions within the relaxation time approximation. From these dielectric functions we derive the dispersion relations of longitudinal and transverse plasma waves., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, final version to be published in Can. J. Phys

Micron sized particles are suspended or even lifted up in a gas by thermophoresis. This allows the study of many processes occurring in strongly coupled complex plasmas at the kinetic level in a relatively stress-free environment. First results are presented. The technique is also of interest for technological applications., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, final version to be published in Phys. Rev. Lett

Temporal meson correlators and their spectral functions are calculated in the deconfined phase using the hard thermal loop resummation technique. The spectral functions exhibit strong medium effects coming from the hard thermal loop approximation for the quark propagator. The correlators, on the other hand, do not differ significantly from free correlators, for which bare quark propagators are used. This is in contrast to lattice calculations showing a clear deviation from the free correlations functions., Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, to be published in the proceedings of the "Strong and Electro-Weak Matter" Conference (14-17 June 2000, Marseille)

We calculate temporal correlators and their spectral functions with meson quantum numbers in the deconfined phase of QCD using the hard thermal loop (HTL) approximation for the quark propagator. Although this approach does not result in a complete next-to-leading order perturbative calculation it takes into account important medium effects such as thermal quark masses and Landau damping in the quark-gluon plasma. We show that both effects lead to competing modifications of the free mesonic correlation functions. We find that correlators in scalar channels are only moderately influenced by the HTL medium effects, while the HTL-vertex corrections lead to divergent vector correlators., Comment: 14 pages, LaTeX2e File, 8 EPS-files, minor changes in abstract and text, to appear in Phys. Lett. B

The appearance of quark phases in the dense interior of neutron stars provides one possibility to soften the equation of state (EOS) of neutron star matter at high densities. This softening leads to more compact equilibrium configurations of neutron stars compared to pure hadronic stars of the same mass. We investigate the question to which amount the compactness of a neutron star can be attributed to the presence of a quark phase. For this purpose we employ several hadronic EOS in the framework of the relativistic mean-field (RMF) model and an extended MIT bag model to describe the quark phase. We find that - almost independent of the model parameters - the radius of a pure hadronic neutron star gets typically reduced by 20-30% if a pure quark phase in the center of the star does exist. For some EOS we furthermore find the possibility of a "third family" of compact stars which may exist besides the two known families of white dwarfs and neutron stars. We show how an experimental proof of the existence of a third family by mass and radius measurements may provide a unique signature for a phase transition inside neutron stars., Comment: 37 pages, 18 eps-figures included, LaTeX

We evaluate the quark-photon vertex non-perturbatively taking into account the gluon condensate at finite temperature. This vertex is related to the previously derived effective quark propagator by a QED like Ward-Takahashi identity. The importance of the effective vertex for the dilepton production rate from a quark-gluon plasma is stressed., Comment: 9 pages including two figures

A calculation of the thermal quark propagator is presented taking the gluon condensate above the critical temperature into account. The quark dispersion relation and the dilepton production following from this propagator are derived., Comment: 4 pages, LATEX (style file included), 3 PostScript figures, to be published in the proceedings of the Quark Matter'99 conference

We present an extension of the HTL resummation technique to non-equilibrium situations, starting from the real time formalism in the Keldysh representation. As an example we calculate the HTL photon self energy, from which we derive the resummed photon propagator. This propagator is applied to the computation of the interaction rate of a hard electron in a non-equilibrium QED plasma. In particular we show the absence of of pinch singularities in these quantities. Finally we show that the Ward identities relating the HTL electron self energy to the HTL electron-photon vertex hold as in equilibrium., Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX, 5 PostScript figures, Talk given at the 5th International Workshop ``Thermal Field Theories and their Applications'', August 10 - 14, 1998, Regensburg, Germany

One of the most intriguing consequence of the extreme conditions inside neutron stars is the possibility of the natural existence of a deconfined strange quark matter phase in the high density interior of the star. The equation of state (EOS) of strange quark matter (SQM) was recently improved in the framework of the MIT bag model by including medium effects. It was found that medium effects increase the energy per baryon of SQM and therefore lower the stability of this phase. In this work we investigate the influence of medium effects on the structure of hybrid stars within this model. We found that the medium effects reduce the extent of a pure SQM phase in the interior of an hybrid star significantly in favor of a mixed phase of quark and hadronic matter., Comment: 5 pages, 1 eps-figure included, 1 gif-figure, to be published in Proc. Int. Workshop "Hirschegg'98: Nuclear Astrophysics"

We investigate the influence of medium effects on the structure of hybrid stars, i.e. neutron stars possessing a quark matter core. We found that medium effects reduce the extent of a pure quark matter phase in the interior of a hybrid star significantly in favor of a mixed phase of quark and hadronic matter. Over a wide range of the strong coupling constant - which parameterizes the influence of medium effects - quark matter is able to exist at least in a mixed phase in the interior of neutron stars., Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX, 4 inline eps-figures, 4 gif-figures, extended discussion, to be published in Nucl. Phys. A. Also available at http://theorie.physik.uni-giessen.de/~schertle/HybStar

We estimate the radiative energy-loss of heavy quarks, produced from the initial fusion of partons, while propagating in a quark-gluon plasma which may be formed in the wake of relativistic heavy ion collisions. We find that the radiative energy-loss for heavy quarks is larger than the collisional energy-loss for all energies. We point out the consequences on possible signals of the quark-gluon plasma., Comment: 5 papes, REVTEX

The complete one-loop self energies (real and imaginary parts) for photons, gluons, electrons and quarks at finite temperature are calculated numerically and compared to the results of the hard thermal loop (HTL) approximation used for the resummation technique of Braaten and Pisarski. In this way some light is shed on the validity of the weak coupling limit assumption ($g \ll 1$) or equivalently the high temperature assumption, on which the HTL approximation is based. Furthermore, the gauge dependence of the fermion self energy beyond the HTL approximation is considered. Finally the dispersion relations following from the real part of the self energies are compared to the HTL results., Comment: 21 pages RevTeX, 15 figures, uses epsf.sty

The hierarchy of equations of motion for equal-time Green functions in temporal gauge SU(N) Yang-Mills theory is truncated using an expansion in terms of connected Green functions. A second hierarchy of constraint equations arises from Gauss law and can be truncated in a similar way. Within this approximation scheme we investigate SU(2) Yang-Mills theory on a torus in 2+1 spacetime dimensions in a finite basis of plane wave states and focus on infrared and ultraviolet properties of the approach. We study the consequences of restoring the hierarchy of Gauss law constraints and of different momentum cutoffs for the 2- and the 3-point functions. In all truncation schemes considered up to the 4-point level the connected Green function approach is found to be UV divergent and either violating gauge invariance and/or energy conservation. The problems associated with adiabatically generating a perturbed ground state are discussed as well., Comment: 43 pages, LaTeX, 15 PS figures

A dynamical model of confinement based on a microscopic transport description of the Friedberg-Lee model is extended to explicit color degrees of freedom. The string tension is reproduced by an adiabatic string formation from the nucleon ground state. As a particular application, we address the question of how a charmonium state might be dissociated by the strong color electric fields when moving through a color electric flux tube and speculate on the importance of such an effect with respect to the issue of $J/\psi $--suppression observed in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. Furthermore, we show the dynamical breakup of flux tubes via $q-\bar{q}$-particle production and the disintegration into mesons. There we encounter some problems within the Vlasov-type realization of describing the motion of the quarks which can be resolved by a molecular dynamical approach., Comment: 12 pages, 5 PostScript figures included, Latex, Contribution to the XXXV International Winter Meeting on Nuclear Physics, Bormio (Italy), 3 - 8 Feb. 1997

We present two novel dynamical features of flux tubes in the Friedberg-Lee model. First the fusion of two (anti-)parallel flux tubes, where we extract a string-string interaction potential which has a qualitative similarity to the nucleon-nucleon potential in the Friedberg-Lee model obtained by Koepf et al. Furthermore we show the dynamical breakup of flux tubes via $q\bar{q}-$particle production and the disintegration into mesons. We find, as a shortcoming of the present realization of the model, that the full dynamical transport approach presented in a previous publication fails to provide the disintegration mechanism in the semiclassical limit. Therefore, in addition, we present here a molecular dynamical approach for the motion of the quarks and show, as a first application, the space-time development of the quarks and their mean-fields for Lund-type string fragmentation processes., Comment: 37 pages, 10 PostScript figures, Latex

The resummation technique of Braaten and Pisarski is used for a complete calculation of the $\alpha^2 \alpha_s$-contribution to the production rate of dileptons with energy E >> T and invariant mass M <~ T from a quark-gluon plasma. In particular the cancellation of the infrared singularity by medium effects is discussed in detail., Comment: 15 pages, 6 PostScript figures, REVTEX, minor numerical correction of the final result, to be published in Phys.Rev.D

The properties of strange quark matter at zero temperature are investigated including medium effects. The quarks are considered as quasiparticles which acquire an effective mass generated by the interaction with the other quarks of the dense system. Within this approach we find that these medium effects reduce the binding energy of strange quark matter with respect to $^{56}Fe$., Comment: 6 pages, 2 Postscript figures, to be published in Proc. Int. Workshop "Hirschegg'97: QCD Phase Transitions"

We investigate the convergence properties of the cluster expansion of equal-time Green functions in scalar theories with quartic self-coupling in (0+1), (1+1), and (2+1) space-time dimensions. The computations are carried out within the equal-time correlation dynamics approach. We find that the cluster expansion shows good convergence as long as the system is in a single phase configuration and that it breaks down in a two phase configuration, as one would naively expect. In the case of dynamical calculations with a time dependent Hamiltonian we find two timescales determining the adiabaticity of the propagation; these are the time required for adiabaticity in the single phase region and the time required for tunneling into the non-localized lowest energy state in the two phase region., Comment: 19 pages, 5 postscript figures

We investigate the properties of strange quark matter at zero temperature including medium effects. The quarks are considered as quasiparticles which acquire an effective mass generated by the interaction with the other quarks of the dense system. The effective quark masses are derived from the zero momentum limit of the dispersion relations following from an effective quark propagator obtained from resumming one-loop self energy diagrams in the hard dense loop approximation. This leads to a thermodynamic selfconsistent description of strange quark matter as an ideal Fermi gas of quasiparticles. Within this approach we find that medium effects reduce the overall binding energy with respect to $^{56}Fe$ of strange quark matter. For realistic values of the strong coupling constant strange quark matter is not absolutely stable. The application to pure strange quark matter stars shows that medium effects have, nevertheless, no impact on the mass-radius relation of the stars. However, a phase transition to hadronic matter at the surface of the stars becomes more likely., Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX, 14 eps-figures included. To be published in Nuclear Physics A

The damping rate of a Higgs field at zero momentum is calculated using the Braaten-Pisarski method and compared to the Lyapunov exponent of the classical SU(2) Yang-Mills Higgs system., Comment: 15 pages, REVTex, 6 figures (PostScript)

A dynamical model of confinement based on a transport theoretical description of the Friedberg-Lee model is extended to explicit color degrees of freedom. The string tension is reproduced by an adiabatic string formation from the nucleon ground state. Color isovector oscillation modes of a $q\bar{q}$-system are investigated for a wide range of relative $q\bar{q}$-momenta and the dynamical impact of color confinement on the quark motion is shown., Comment: 12 pages plus 5 figures

We compute the photon production rate of a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) at finite quark chemical potential $\mu $ using the Braaten-Pisarski method, thus continuing the work of Kapusta, Lichard, and Seibert who did the calculation for $\mu =0$., Comment: 9 pages, revtex, no figures, error in soft part corrected, figures available at ftp://theorie.physik.uni-giessen.de/usr/users/ftp/photon/

Using the cluster expansions for n-point Green functions we derive a closed set of dynamical equations of motion for connected equal-time Green functions by neglecting all connected functions higher than $4^{th}$ order for the $\lambda \Phi^4$-theory in $1+1$ dimensions. We apply the equations to the investigation of spontaneous ground state symmetry breaking, i.e. to the evaluation of the effective potential at temperature $T=0$. Within our momentum space discretization we obtain a second order phase transition (in agreement with the Simon-Griffith theorem) and a critical coupling of $\lambda_{crit}/4m^2=2.446$ as compared to a first order phase transition and $\lambda_{crit}/4m^2=2.568$ from the Gaussian effective potential approach., Comment: 25 Revtex pages, 5 figures available via fpt from the directory ugi-94-11 of ftp@theorie.physik.uni-giessen.de as one postscript file (there was a bug in our calculations, all numerical results and figures have changed significantly), ugi-94-11

A constraint correlation dynamics up to 4-point Green functions is proposed for SU(N) gauge theories which reduces the N-body quantum field problem to the two-body level. The resulting set of nonlinear coupled equations fulfills all conservation laws including fermion number, linear and angular momenta as well as the total energy. Apart from the conservation laws in the space-time degrees of freedom the Gauss law is conserved as a quantum expectation value identically for all times. The same holds for the Ward identities as generated by commutators of Gauss operators. The constraint dynamical equations are highly non-perturbative and thus applicable also in the strong coupling regime, as e.g. low-energy QCD problems., Comment: 26 pages, LATEX, UGI-94-09

A constraint correlation dynamics up to 4-point Green's functions is proposed for SU(N) gauge theories which reduces the N-body quantum field problem to the two-body level. The resulting set of nonlinear coupled equations fulfills all conservation laws including baryon number, linear and angular momenta as well as the total energy. Apart from the conservation laws in the space-time degrees of freedom the Gauss law is conserved identically for all times. The constraint dynamical equations are highly non-perturbative and thus applicable also in the strong coupling regime as e.g., low-energy QCD problems., Comment: LATEX, 8 pages

We investigate the processes leading to phase-space equilibration of parton distributions in nuclear interactions at collider energies. We derive a set of rate equations describing the chemical equilibration of gluons and quarks including medium effects on the relevant QCD transport coefficients, and discuss their consequences for parton equilibration in heavy ion collisions., Comment: 18 pages, 6 Figures appended as uuencoded PostScript files, (no changes in the previously submitted manuscript), DUKE-TH-93-46

We show that higher-order vacuum polarization would contribute a measureable net charge to atoms, if the charges of electrons and positrons do not balance precisely. We obtain the limit $|Q_e+Q_{\bar e}| < 10^{-18} e$ for the sum of the charges of electron and positron. This also constitutes a new bound on certain violations of PCT invariance., Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure attached as PostScript file, DUKE-TH-92-38. Revised version