The project 'Plasmakristall-4' (PK-4) - a new stage in investigations of dusty plasmas under microgravity conditions: first results and future plans

The PK-4 experiment is a continuation of the successful dusty plasma experiments PK-1, PK-2 and PK-3 conducted on board of the orbital space stations Mir and International Space Station. For all these experiments it is important to avoid the strong influence of gravity, exerting an external stress on the system. Whereas PK-3 and PK-3 Plus experiments are using a planar rf capacitive discharge, PK-4 studies complex plasmas in a long cylindrical chamber with a combined dc/rf discharge. Such a configuration of the chamber will provide a particular advantage for investigation of different dynamical phenomena in complex plasmas such as sheared laminar flow of a highly nonideal dusty liquid and its transition to the turbulent regime, nozzle flow, boundary layers and instabilities, shock waves (solitons) formation and propagation, dust particle lane formation, and space dust grain separation according to their size.