Self-organization of dust grains into stable filamentary dust structures (or “chains”) largely depends on dynamic interactions between individual charged dust grains and complex electric potential arising from the distribution of charges within a local plasma environment. Recent studies have shown that the positive column of the gas discharge plasma in the Plasmakristall-4 (PK-4) experiment at the International Space Station supports the presence of fast-moving ionization waves, which lead to variations of plasma parameters by up to an order of magnitude from the average background values. The highly variable environment resulting from ionization waves may have interesting implications for the dynamics and self-organization of dust particles, particularly concerning the formation and stability of dust chains. Here, we investigate the electric potential surrounding dust chains in the PK-4 experiment by employing a molecular dynamics model of the dust and ions with boundary conditions supplied by a particle-in-cell with Monte Carlo collision simulation of the ionization waves. The model is used to examine the effects of the plasma conditions within different regions of the ionization wave and compare the resulting dust structure to that obtained by employing the time-averaged plasma conditions. The comparison between simulated dust chains and experimental data from the PK-4 experiment shows that the time-averaged plasma conditions do not accurately reproduce observed results for dust behavior, indicating that more careful treatment of plasma conditions in the presence of ionization waves is required. It is further shown that commonly used analytic forms of the electric potential do not accurately describe the electric potential near charged dust grains under these plasma conditions.
Numerical Modeling of the Plasmakristall-4 Experiment on the ISS
The microgravity environment of the Plasmakristall-4 experiment on the International
Space Station provides a laboratory for exploring plasma-mediated interactions among
charged dust grains in fully three-dimensional space. Away from the strong influence of
Earth's gravity, the dust grains can levitate in the bulk of the plasma, where they have been
observed to form extended filamentary structures aligned with the discharge tube axis. These
structures can be used as a macroscopic analogue for other self-organizing systems, including
electrorheological fluids and liquid crystals, and the success of the analogy depends on a
thorough understanding of the mechanisms guiding the dust interaction potential. Here we
present the results from molecular dynamics simulations of the ion flow past isolated dust
chains within the dust cloud and the dust cloud macrostructure. Although dust grains are
known to respond on the millisecond timescale, analysis reveals that periodic variations of
plasma conditions on the microsecond timescale significantly affect dust structure formation.
In addition to the expected formation of filamentary dust chains in the dust cloud
macrostructure, dust grains in a large cloud are also observed to organize into ordered
positions on the surface of nested cylinders, in agreement with experimental observations.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1903450
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10469445
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- ["dusty plasma","complex plasma","self-organization"]
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- National Harbor, MD & Online
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2023-1587
