Dust trajectories and diagnostic applications beyond strongly coupled dusty plasmas
- Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 (United States)
Plasma interaction with dust is of growing interest for a number of reasons. On the one hand, dusty plasma research has become one of the most vibrant branches of plasma science. On the other hand, substantially less is known about dust dynamics outside the laboratory strongly coupled dusty-plasma regime, which typically corresponds to 10{sup 15} m{sup -3} electron density with ions at room temperature. Dust dynamics is also important to magnetic fusion because of concerns about safety and potential dust contamination of the fusion core. Dust trajectories are measured under two plasma conditions, both of which have larger densities and hotter ions than in typical dusty plasmas. Plasma-flow drag force, dominating over other forces in flowing plasmas, can explain the dust motion. In addition, quantitative understanding of dust trajectories is the basis for diagnostic applications using dust. Observation of hypervelocity dust in laboratory enables dust as diagnostic tool (hypervelocity dust injection) in magnetic fusion. In colder plasmas ({approx}10 eV or less), dust with known physical and chemical properties can be used as microparticle tracers to measure both the magnitude and directions of flows in plasmas with good spatial resolution as the microparticle tracer velocimetry.
- OSTI ID:
- 21062059
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 14, Issue 10; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2778416; (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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