Design and Implementation of a Triggering and Synchronization System for Afterglow Experiments in Dusty Plasmas

We report on the design and development of an electronic control system for experiments with dusty plasma in the temporal afterglow. A temporal afterglow occurs when the power sustaining a plasma discharge is suddenly switched off, leading to rapid changes in electron and ion populations. In dusty plasma experiments, it is crucial to shut off the radio-frequency (RF) power with microsecond precision and synchronize this event with high-speed video diagnostics. The goal of this project was to build and test a setup that controls the timing of the RF power shutdown and synchronizes it with a high-speed camera. This setup was deployed in plasma afterglow experiments conducted at the Magnetized Plasma Research Laboratory (MPRL) at Auburn University.