Volumetric measurements of a spatially growing dust acoustic wave

Abstract

In this study, tomographic particle image velocimetry (tomo-PIV) techniques are used to make volumetric measurements of the dust acoustic wave (DAW) in a weakly coupled dusty plasma system in an argon, dc glow discharge plasma. These tomo-PIV measurements provide the first instantaneous volumetric measurement of a naturally occurring propagating DAW. These measurements reveal over the measured volume that the measured wave mode propagates in all three spatial dimensional and exhibits the same spatial growth rate and wavelength in each spatial direction. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.