Synchronization of particle motion in compressed two-dimensional plasma crystals
Abstract
The collective motion of dust particles during the mode-coupling induced melting of a two-dimensional plasma crystal is explored in molecular dynamics simulations. The crystal is compressed horizontally by an anisotropic confinement. This compression leads to an asymmetric triggering of the mode-coupling instability which is accompanied by alternating chains of in-phase and anti-phase oscillating particles. A new order parameter is proposed to quantify the synchronization with respect to different directions of the crystal. Depending on the orientation of the confinement anisotropy, mode-coupling instability and synchronized motion are observed in one or two directions. Notably, the synchronization is found to be direction-dependent. The good agreement with experiments suggests that the confinement anisotropy can be used to explain the observed synchronization process.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1507.04480,
title = {Synchronization of particle motion in compressed two-dimensional plasma crystals},
author = {I. Laut and C. Räth and S. Zhdanov and V. Nosenko and L. Couëdel and H. M. Thomas},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.04480},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
6 pages, 4 figures