Influence of Temporal Variations in Plasma Conditions on the Electric Potential Near Self-Organized Dust Chains

The self-organization of dust grains into stable filamentary dust structures (or "chains") largely depends on dynamic interactions between the individual charged dust grains and the complex electric potential arising from the distribution of charges within the local plasma environment. Recent studies have shown that the positive column of the gas discharge plasma in the Plasmakristall-4 (PK-4) experiment onboard the International Space Station (ISS) supports the presence of fast-moving ionization waves, which lead to variations of plasma parameters by up to an order of magnitude from the average background values. The highly-variable environment resulting from ionization waves may have interesting implications for the dynamics and self-organization of dust particles, particularly concerning the formation and stability of dust chains. Here we investigate the electric potential surrounding dust chains in the PK-4 by employing a molecular dynamics model of the dust and ions with boundary conditions supplied by a Particle-in-Cell with Monte Carlo collisions (PIC-MCC) simulation of the ionization waves. The model is used to examine the effects of the plasma conditions within different regions of the ionization wave and compare the resulting dust structure to that obtained by employing the time-averaged plasma conditions. Comparison between simulated dust chains and experimental data from the PK-4 shows that the time-averaged plasma conditions do not accurately reproduce observed results for dust behavior, indicating that more careful treatment of plasma conditions in the presence of ionization waves is required. It is further shown that commonly used analytic forms of the electric potential do not accurately describe the electric potential near charged dust grains under these plasma conditions.