Greifswald 2009 – scientific programme

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P: Fachverband Plasmaphysik

P 11: Poster: Staubige Plasmen

P 11.2: Poster

Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 17:30–19:30, Foyer des IfP

Short-time behavior of spherical plasma crystals — •Hanno Kählert and Michael Bonitz — Institut für Theoretische Physik und Astrophysik, Christian-Albrechts Universität zu Kiel, 24098 Kiel

Strongly coupled charged particles in external confinement potentials are of high interest in many fields, e.g. laser-cooled ions or dusty plasmas. Here we investigate spherical dust crystals, so-called Yukawa balls [1], by means of Langevin dynamics (LD) simulations. In contrast to confined ions the motion of dust particles occurs on a ’macroscopic’ timescale which makes these systems an ideal subject for studying dynamical quantities on short time-scales and in the strong coupling limit. The analysis is based on a simple model which was shown to accurately describe the experiments [2].

The results from our LD simulations reveal an interesting behavior for the time evolution of the kinetic energy after the particles are released in the confinement potential [3], strongly dependent on the friction coefficient. Other quantities of interest are the evolution of the velocity distribution function and the time-dependent radial density profile.

[1] O. Arp et al., Physical Review Letters 93, 165004 (2004)

[2] M. Bonitz et al., Physical Review Letters 96, 075001 (2006)

[3] H. Kählert et al., Physical Review E 78, 036408 (2008)