Experimental observation of a first order phase transition in a complex plasma mono-layer crystal
Abstract
The formation and melting of a mono-layered charged dust particle crystal in a DC glow discharge Argon plasma is studied. The nature of the melting/formation process is established as a first order phase transition from the nature of the variations in the Coulomb coupling parameter, the dust temperature, the structural order parameter and from the existence of a hysteresis behavior. Our experimental results are distinctly different from existing theoretical predictions for 2D crystals based on the KTHNY mechanism or the Grain boundary induced melting and indicate a novel mechanism that is akin to a fluctuation induced first order phase transition that has not been observed before in complex plasmas.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2004.00213,
title = {Experimental observation of a first order phase transition in a complex plasma mono-layer crystal},
author = {M. G. Hariprasad and P. Bandyopadhyay and Garima Arora and A. Sen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.00213},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
The manuscript contains 6 pages, 5 figures. This manuscript is accepted for publication in PRE, 2020