Appearance and dynamics of plasma spheroids in a dusty plasma

Maxime Mikikian (1) , Jean-François Lagrange (1) , Hagop Tawidian (1) , Thomas Lecas (1) , Isabelle Géraud-Grenier (1) , Véronique Massereau-Guilbaud (1)

1 GREMI - Groupe de recherches sur l'énergétique des milieux ionisés

Low frequency instabilities are often induced by the growth of dust particles in low pressure plasmas. These unstable phenomena are easily detected on the plasma glow emission: Regions with an enhanced emission appear stochastically or regularly at different places of the plasma. They can be considered as striations of the plasma but their exact nature can only be revealed using high-speed imaging. This diagnostics shows that they consist of bright plasma spots (called plasma spheroids or plasmoids) moving and interacting close to the electrodes or in the plasma bulk. Their dynamics and their mutual interactions (especially their merging or their splitting) are analyzed.

Mots clés: Dusty plasmas; Complex plasmas; Dust particle growth; Instabilities; Plasmoids; Plasma spheroids

Domaines: Plasmas; Physique des plasmas [physics.plasm-ph]

Maxime Mikikian, Jean-François Lagrange, Hagop Tawidian, Thomas Lecas, Isabelle Géraud-Grenier, et al.. Appearance and dynamics of plasma spheroids in a dusty plasma. XXII Europhysics Conference on Atomic and Molecular Physics of Ionized Gases (ESCAMPIG), Jul 2014, Greifswald, Germany. pp.P2-07-06. ⟨hal-01053559⟩