EXPERIMENTS ON PHASE TRANSITIONS IN 3D DUSTY PLASMA UNDER MICROGRAVITY CONDITIONS

Abstract

The investigations have been performed onboard the International Space Station (ISS) with the help of the PK-3 Plus laboratory. Due to the manipulation of the interaction potential between the microparticles it is possible to initiate a phase transition from isotropic plasma into electrorheological plasma. The crystal-liquid phase transition was obtained in large 3D isotropic dusty plasma system. First observations of a transition of the dusty plasma system state due to variations of the plasma component density are presented.