Dynamics of Dusty Plasmas

Dusty plasmas consist of nano- or micrometer-sized particles immersed in a gaseous plasma environment. There these "dust" particles attain high negative charges and form strongly-coupled systems bridging the field of plasmas and condensed matter. The fascination for these systems orginates from the fact that dusty plasmas allow to study dynamic processes on the kinetic level of individual particles. The dust particles show a wide variety of fascinating dynamic properties such as vibrational modes in strongly-coupled finite systems, dust-density waves in extended systems or demixing processes in binary mixtures of dust particles. Moreover, the plasma properties are strongly influenced by the presence of the dust. Recent experiments suggest a quite complicated reaction of the plasma discharge on the dust. Both aspects allow to shed light on the fascinating dust-dust and dust-plasma interactions. I will show some examples on the dynamics of dusty plasmas from our laboratory experiments and our experiments on parabolic flights together with the involved diagnostic methods.