Plasmakristall-4: New complex (dusty) plasma laboratory on board the International Space Station

New complex-plasma facility, Plasmakristall-4 (PK-4), has been recently commissioned on board the International Space Station. Incomplex plasmas, the subsystem ofμm-sized microparticles immersed in low-pressure weakly ionized gas-dischargeplasmas becomes strongly coupled due to the high (103–104 e) electric charge on the microparticle surface. The microparticle subsystem ofcomplex plasmas is available for the observation at the kinetic level, which makescomplex plasmas appropriate for particle-resolved modeling of classical condensed matter phenomena. The main purpose of PK-4 is the investigation of flowingcomplex plasmas. To generateplasma, PK-4 makes use of a classical dcdischarge in a glass tube, whose polarity can be switched with the frequency of the order of 100 Hz. This frequency is high enough not to be felt by the relatively heavy microparticles. The duty cycle of the polarity switching can be also varied allowing to vary the drift velocity of the microparticles and (when necessary) to trap them. The facility is equipped with two videocameras andillumination laser for the microparticle imaging, kaleidoscopicplasma glow observation system and minispectrometer forplasma diagnostics and various microparticle manipulation devices (e.g., powerful manipulation laser). Scientificexperiments are programmed in the form of scripts written with the help of specially developed C scripting language libraries. PK-4 is mainly operated from the ground (control center CADMOS in To...
Source: Review of Scientific Instruments - Category: Physics Authors: Source Type: research