Collective particle dynamics in a complex plasma

Abstract

The dust-plasma system is an open system. Strong interactions of dust particles and the openness of the system lead to self-organization and `structurization' of initially homogeneous dust clouds into a complex aggregate of dissipative dust structures and dust voids, with sharp boundaries between them. These structures become quasi-stationary within short time scales and they are determined by a limited number of parameters controlling the structure. The quasi-stationary structures can be studied numerically and the limited ranges of the variations of the controlling parameters allow us to scan distributions of plasma and dust characteristics within them.