Pattern formation and spatiotemporal behavior of filamentary structures in the Magnetized Dusty Plasma eXperiment (MDPX) at Auburn University

Previous experiments [1, 2] have shown that low temperature (< 5 eV), low density (~ 10¹⁵ m^-3), strongly magnetized (when electron and ion gyro radii are smaller than their respective neutral collision mean free paths), capacitively coupled rf-plasmas can spontaneously form filamentary structures and self-organized patterns. The filaments appear as elongated structures parallel to the magnetic field (B), representing non-uniformities in the plasma light emission. Perpendicular to B, stable filaments can have different shapes such as circular and multi-arm spirals (azimuthal modes). Novel radial confinement schemes and fast imaging reveal various complex spatiotemporal dynamics such as translation and rotation of individual filaments, transformation between various morphologies, formation and destruction of filaments due to interactions with background plasma turbulence, emergence of filaments from azimuthally elongated zonal flow like structures etc. This presentation will give an overview of recent experimental efforts in the Magnetized Dusty Plasma Experiment (MDPX) at Auburn University to understand the complex dynamics of these elongated filamentary structures.

[1] M. Schwabe, U. Konopka et.al., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2011)

[2] S. Williams, S.C. Thakur, M. Menati, E. Thomas, Phys. Plasmas (2022)