Mobility in a strongly coupled dusty plasma

A dusty plasma is a four-component mixture of micron-size particles of solid matter, ions, electrons, and neutral gas. The solid particles, or “dust,” are typically polymer microspheres of a precise size. They become highly charged by collecting more electrons than ions, so that they interact among themselves with large Coulomb potentials. They can act as a “strongly coupled plasma,” meaning that their Coulomb interparticle potentials greatly exceed their thermal kinetic energies. For this reason, the collection of dust particles can act cooperatively like molecules in a liquid.