RUI: Experimental Study of the Interaction of an Electron Beam with a Dusty Plasma and the Emergence of Turbulence

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A "dusty" or "complex" plasma is an ionized gas consisting of ions, electrons, and small particulate matter (dust or ice) that is typically much smaller than the width of a human hair. In space, examples of dusty plasmas include the clouds from which stars and planets form, comet tails, planetary rings and noctilucent clouds in the Earth's ionosphere. Dusty plasmas are also formed in the chemically active plasmas that are used in industrial plasma processing devices to create computer chips, contaminating the end product and reducing overall yield, and the manufacturing of solar photovoltaic cells, where the dust can increase the overall efficiency of the resulting solar cells. This award will support a series of experiments aimed at understanding a fundamental property of this unique state of matter and will also make use of the properties of these dusty plasmas systems to gain insight into the fundamental properties of a fluid. The research program will support the training of several highly talented undergraduate students in a small college environment, providing the students with a more comprehensive research skills training than at comparable experiences at larger institutions; experience with state-of-the-art software and experimental techniques; and a variety of practical problem solving skills.The research program consists of several experiments that will examine the interaction between an electron beam and dusty plasma. One series of experiments will leverage the fact that dusty plasmas behave like a viscoelastic fluid to gain fundamental insight into the precursors of hydrodynamic turbulence at the particle level at much smaller Reynold’s numbers than in a traditional fluid system. A second series of experiments will make use of a fundamental wave mode that propagates in dusty plasma systems known as the dust acoustic wave to understand the emergence of a second type of turbulence known as wave turbulence. A third set of experiments will examine how the dust grain charge, yielding new insight into a fundamental and open question in the dusty plasma community: what is the charge on the dust grain. This work will extend collaborative work done with colleagues at in the Plasma Science Laboratory at Auburn University, the Center of Astrophysics, Space Physics and Engineering Research at Baylor University and the Electron Accelerators Laboratory at the National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics in Romania. Together, these studies will contribute to the fundamental understanding of the fundamental process of charging in dusty plasmas and provide new insight into the emergence of two different types of turbulence.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.