Collective Dynamics of Strongly Coupled Dusty Plasmas

Some selected highlights of theoretical and experimental research at IPR in the area of strongly coupled plasmas are presented. Theoretical analysis using the generalized hydrodynamics model have found interesting modifications in the linear propagation characteristics of dust acoustic waves (DAWs) including additional dispersive contributions and regions where partial derivative omega/partial derivative k < 0. The analysis also predicted the existence of transverse shear waves in the liquid state of the dust component which were subsequently detected for the first time in laboratory experiments done at the Institute. Interesting experimental results in the strongly coupled regime were also obtained for DAWs including the first ever observations of solitary pulse propagation in such a medium.