PPPS-2013: Simulating the dynamics of complex/dusty plasmas

Summary form only given. Complex/dusty plasmas consist of microparticles of a well-defined size that are embedded in a low temperature plasma. These particles charge up negatively and strongly interact with each other. They display a wealth of collective effects that can be studied on the level of individual particles. Here, we present a simulation that is able to reproduce many of the dynamical effects observed in experiments. It consists of a coupled fluid simulation of the plasma and a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of the microparticle dynamics. The fluid simulation is based on a hybrid code [1] developed for the finite elements simulation tool COMSOL. The plasma bulk is simulated as fluid, and the sheaths are solved analytically. The MD code uses the open source tool LAMMPS [2] and extends it to take into account the forces from the plasma. This way, we reproduce experimental findings such as void formation, separation by particle size, formation of Mach cones by a probe particle, and lane formation.