Instabilities in a complex DC plasma

The PK-4 setup uses a DC discharge to create a plasma inside a glass tube in Argon or Neon at a pressure of around 1 mbar. Plastic micro-spheres injected into the plasma collect several thousand electrons and interact with each other over a screened (Debye-Hückel) potential. This tunable interaction allows to study matter on an atomistic level in nearly every state, from crystalline (`plasma crystal´) to super-critical^1,2,3.