Evolution of Dust Structures from Room to Cryogenic Temperatures.

In this work dusty plasma of dc glow discharge at the temperatures in the range of 4.2–300 K was experimentally and numerically investigated. As it was shown in the experiments, the deep cooling of discharge tube walls leads to dramatic change of dusty plasma properties. In particular, sufficient increase of dust particle kinetic temperature (by about an order) and dust density (by several orders) was observed at low (cryogenic) temperatures. At 4.2 K, this can lead to the forming of a super dense dust structures with novel properties. Numerical simulations of charging process, dust charge fluctuation and screening of dust particle charge in plasma were made in dependence with the neutral gas temperature and dust density. The main attention was given to proper ion-atom collision analysis that allows us to investigate mechanisms of dust structure transformation observed in the cryogenic experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]