Speaker
Adrian Scurtu
Description
See the full Abstract at http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2018ABS/pdf/P5.3002.pdf
Dense plasma jets used in dusty plasma experiments
A. Scurtu1, D. Ticos1, N. Udrea1, M.L. Mitu1, C.M. Ticos1
1
National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics, Bucharest-Magurele,Romania
A coaxial plasma gun has been successfully used to accelerate dust particles at
hypervelocity [1], to operate as a useful tool for cleaning various surfaces covered with dust
[2-3], or to produce dense plasma jets for testing fusion materials [4]. In our recent
experiments we studied the interaction between a pulsed plasma jet ejected from a coaxial
gun and a dust crystal produced in a radio-frequency plasma. The essential feature of our new
experiments is the passing of the plasma jet through a thin slit or through small holes to get a
thin layer of plasma or a “multi-jet” to interact with just one layer of the crystal. The coaxial
plasma gun was powered by a capacitor charged up at 2 kV. The ejected plasma had a speed
of a few km s-1, a peak electron temperature of ~10 eV, and peak electron density of ~1021
m-3. Interesting phenomena such as dust particle acceleration, particle oscillations and dusty
plasma instabilities were observed.
References:
[1] C.M. Ticos, Z. Wang, L. A. Dorf, G. A. Wurden, A plasmadynamic hypervelocity dust injector for the
National Spherical Torus Experiment, Rev. Sci. Instr. 77, 10E304 (2006).
[2] C.M. Ticos, A. Scurtu, D. Toader, N Banu, Experimental demonstration of Martian soil simulant removal
from surfaces using a pulsed plasma jet, Rev. Sci. Instr. 86, 033509 (2015).
[3] C.M. Ticos, A. Scurtu, D. Ticos, A pulsed 'plasma broom' for dusting off surfaces on Mars, New J. Phys.
19, 063006 (2017).
[4] C.M. Ticos et al., Cracks and nanodroplets produced on tungsten surface samples by dense plasma jets,
Appl. Surf. Sci. 434 , 1122-1128 (2018).
