Study of the Dusty-Gas Discharge Plasma in the Plasma Crystal-3 Plus Space Laboratory (Review)

The main results of a completed cycle of complex studies of a strongly coupled dusty plasma conducted in the unique, experimental Plasma Crystal-3 Plus space laboratory that operated on the International Space Station are discussed. The experiments on the physics of phenomena in the dusty plasma are analyzed. A new state of dusty plasma, the electrorheological plasma, in which there is a transition from an isotropic plasma-dusty liquid to an anisotropic state, is studied. The study of the interpenetration of particles streams of various diameters, a nonequilibrium transition, is described. Experimental studies of the liquid–crystal phase transition in a three-dimensional dusty plasma system in which it is established that the dust component is compressed and crystallized upon a decrease in the neutral gas pressure are discussed. The nearly free motion of large particles in the volume of a plasma crystal, a nonviscous, irrotational flow about a large particle by a “liquid” of small dust particles, is analyzed. An experimental study of the dynamics of the crystallization of three-dimensional plasma-dust systems at a constant argon pressure under the effect of a low-frequency, alternating electric field and without its influence under microgravity conditions is described. The formation of the crystallization front and its propagation in the three-dimensional plasma-dust system with a velocity on the order of the average interparticle distance per second were discovered.