Agglomerations of magnetized dust particles in complex plasmas

Dust-dust interactions in complex plasmas have been studied when effects of an external magnetic field become important. It is shown that the forces from particle magnetization may result in mutual repulsion as well as attraction. It was found that magnetized grains coalesce, forming field-aligned chains. Since the "disruptive" electrostatic forces increase with the distance from the centre of a chain, whereas the "cohesion" magnetic forces decrease, there is an intrinsic length scale for these particle chains. A model was developed to determine the length of these structures. These finding were then applied to recent complex plasma experiments with paramagnetic particles.