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Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Experimental Methods of Dust Charging and Mobilization on Surfaces with Exposure to Ultraviolet Radiation or Plasmas
Published on: April 3, 2018
Laboratory observations of self-excited dust acoustic shocks
J Heinrich1, S-H Kim, R L Merlino
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA.
Abstract:
Repeated, self-excited dust acoustic shock waves (DASWs) have been observed in a dc glow discharge dusty plasma using high-speed video imaging. Two major observations are reported: (1) The self-steepening of a nonlinear dust acoustic wave (DAW) into a saw-tooth wave with sharp gradient in dust density, very similar to those found in numerical solutions of the fully nonlinear fluid equations for a nondispersive DAW [B. Eliasson and P. K. Shukla, Phys. Rev. E 69, 067401 (2004)], and (2) the collision and confluence of two DASWs.
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