Dusty Plasma under Conditions of Glow Discharge in Magnetic Field of up to 2.5 T

Abstract

Under conditions of glow discharge in the strong magnetic field, three-dimensional dust structures were created in the He, Ne, and Ar working gases in three types of dust traps (in standing stratum, in the region of current channel narrowing, and in the region of nonuniform magnetic field). These structures are stable in the fields of the order of 2 T. In all traps, the rotation dynamics have been studied of horizontal (perpendicular to the magnetic field) cross sections of dust structures, their angular velocities has been measured, and the nonuniform angular velocity distributions in the dust structure volumes have been measured. For the first time, for the trap in the region of current channel narrowing, the data are presented in the range of magnetic inductions of up to 2.5 T. Such magnetic fields correspond to the Ne⁺ ion magnetization parameter of approximately 2 and the ion cyclotron radius comparable to the shielding distance. In the fields higher than 1.5 T, the angular velocity of the structure rotation increased to 50 s^–1, which is a record-breaking fast rotation of dusty plasma. For each of the traps under study, the geometrical features of the dust structures are described.