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https://doi.org/10.7567/1347-4065/ab6565

Subdiffusion of dust particles in cryogenic plasmas

Yessenbek Q. Aldakulov1*, Zhandos A. Moldabekov1,2* , Mukhit Muratov3, and Tlekkabul S. Ramazanov1
1
Institute of Experimental and Theoretical Physics at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty 050040, Kazakhstan
2
Institute of Applied Science and IT, 40-48 Shashkin Str., 050038 Almaty, Kazakhstan
3
National Nanotechnological Laboratory of Open Type at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty 050040, Kazakhstan
*
E-mail: yessenbek.aldakul@gmail.com; zhandos@physics.kz
Received September 6, 2019; revised November 5, 2019; accepted December 24, 2019; published online February 26, 2020

Neutral shadowing force, which becomes comparable with a screened Coulomb force at extreme cryogenic conditions, can significantly change
the properties of complex plasmas. In this work, the impact of neutral shadowing force on the mean square displacement (MSD) of dust particles is
investigated. This is done by performing Langevin dynamics simulations of a 2D system of strongly correlated particles. The results of this work
show that the additional force due to the neutral shadowing effect has a strong impact on MSD, i.e. the diffusive motion of particles, only if the mean
free path of neutral gas particles exceeds the mean inter-dust-particle distance. In the latter case, we find that neutral shadowing force leads to
subdiffusion on time scales of the order of tens or hundreds of dust particle plasma oscillation periods. Furthermore, we find that neutral shadowing
force can strongly hinder the transition from anomalous diffusion to normal diffusion. © 2020 The Japan Society of Applied Physics

greater net repulsion force causing a less dense system which

1. Introduction
It has been observed in complex plasma experiments at
cryogenic conditions (at temperatures of neutral gas
Tn » 4.2 K and pressure P » 0.6 Pa ) that a system of dust
particles has a mean inter-dust-particle distance of about
500 m m, which is a thousand times as large as the dust
particles’ radius (0.4 m m ).1) However, in earlier cryogenic
complex plasma experiments carried out by Antipov et al.2,3)
with 5.44 m m dust particles at P = 100–700 Pa and
Tn » 4.2 K the mean inter-dust-particle distance did not
exceed 30 m m resulting in a highly dense system of charged
dust particles (~109 cm-3). The results led the authors to
conclude that this was due to the small value of dust charge
Q » -2000e (e is the elementary charge) and the short
screening length lD » 4 m m.
A theoretical explanation of the discrepancy between the
aforementioned experimental results was given in Ref. 4,
where it was shown that the contradiction arises due to the
effect of a neutral shadowing force. At extremely low
temperature and pressure of neutral gas (Tn < 10 K and
P < 10 Pa ), the surface temperature of dust particles turns
out to be much higher than the neutral gas temperature. To be
more exact, calculations have shown that, at Tn » 4.2 K and
pressure P » 0.6 Pa, the surface temperature of a dust
particle is 10 times the background gas temperature. The
cause of the high surface temperature was identified to be a
high ion–electron recombination rate at the dust particles’
surface (i.e. strong plasma flux on the dust particle surface
due to a low temperature of ions). This difference in
temperature and low value of pressure create a flux of neutral
gas particles from the dust particles’ surface causing a neutral
shadowing force:5)
3pd 4P (Ts - Tn )
Fn (r ) = , (1 )
8aTn r 2
where d is the dust particles’ radius, Ts is the dust particles’
surface temperature, and a is the mean inter-dust-particle
distance.
A neutral shadowing force (1) acts as an additional
repulsion force and with Coulomb’s force adds up to a
was observed by Ishihara and his co-workers.1) At the
parameters of plasma in Refs. 2, 3 the strength of a neutral
shadowing force is much less than that of Coulomb’s force
and shows no impact.
Another important fact about neutral shadowing force is
that the range of action of the force (1) is constrained by the
mean free path of the neutral gas particles. This is because, in
the considered rarefied gas, after several collisions atoms give
up energy to other atoms leading to a damping of the flux of
atoms directed from the dust particle. Therefore, together
with the dust particle charge and plasma screening length, the
mean free path of the neutral gas particles becomes an
important parameter defining the dynamical and structural
characteristics of dust particles at cryogenic conditions.6,7)
In this work we focus on the mean square displacement of
dust particles (MSD), which characterizes the diffusion of
particles. The MSD is calculated by performing a Langevin
dynamics simulation taking into account the screened
Coulomb interaction and neutral shadowing force (1).
In the next section the simulation method is described.
After that the results are given and discussed in Sect. 3.
2. Simulation method and parameters
We perform molecular dynamics simulations of a 2D system
consisting of N = 900 identical particles in a square box of a
side length L = pN a. The Langevin equation of motion for
the system is written as follows:
mr̈ = F (r ) - mg r + fR,
where m is the particle mass, g = 8 2p Pd / (3mvTn ) is the
friction coefficient, vTn is the thermal velocity of neutral gas
particles, and fR is the random force which is related to the
friction coefficient through the equation8)
⟨fR (t )⟩ = 0,
⟨fR (t ) fR (t ¢)⟩ = 2mgk B Td d (t - t ¢).
Here kB is the Boltzmann constant, Td is the dust particle
temperature and F (r ) is the force exerted on the dust particle
whose magnitude is determined by the equation

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Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 59, SHHE02 (2020) Y. Q. Aldakulov et al.

dU (r )
F (r ) = - + Fn (r ) , (2 )
dr
where U (r ) = Q 2 exp (-r /lD ) / (4pe0 r ) is the Yukawa
potential, and lD = e0 kB Ti / (ni e 2 ) is the Debye radius.
Our choices for basic units are a (the mean inter-dust-
particle distance) for length, wd-1 = (Q 2 / (2pe0 ma3))-1 / 2
(the inverse of the characteristic dust particle oscillation
frequency) for time,  = Q 2 / (4pe0 a ) for energy, and m for
mass. Thus, Eq. (2) can be rewritten in the reduced form
(1 + kr*) exp ( - kr*) s
F *= + 2, (3 )
r*2 r*
Fig. 1. (Color online) MSD of 2D system of dust particles at k = 1,
with the superscript “*” denoting a dimensionless quantity.
G = 50 and friction coefficient g * = 0.01. The results for steadily increasing
The dimensionless parameter σ in (3) characterizes the s at rs = 2 and rs = 1 are shown. Both axes are in logarithmic scale.
strength of repulsion due to the neutral shadowing force and
its impact range is determined by the cut-off radius rs = l /a4)
where l is the mean free path of neutral gas particles:
⎧ 3pd 4PDT
⎪ , r *  rs
s = ⎨ 8aTn  .
⎪
⎩ 0, r * > rs

In order to estimate the friction coefficient, which exists in

cryogenic complex plasma experiments, we approximate the
following quantities, taking into account Ref. 9: Q » -100e,
d » 1 m m, m n » 10-23 g (the mass of the neutral gas
particles), lD » 10 m m, P » 1 Pa, Tn » 2 K. Then, we find
g * = g /wd » 0.01.
Now, there are four dimensionless parameters that set the
conditions of the charged dust particle system. The first two Fig. 2. (Color online) Same as Fig. 1 but with G = 100.
of them are k = a /lD , which is the screening parameter, and
G = Q 2 / (4pe0 akB Td ), which is the coupling parameter. The
other two are the dimensionless parameter s and the cut-off
radius rs, which characterize the neutral shadowing force. We
consider the cases G = 50, 100, 150 and k = 1, 2. For
2 K  Tn  30 K the chosen values of k correspond
to the mean inter-dust-particle distance in the range
10 m m  a  80 m m.2,3)
There are two important regimes, one with l » a and
another with l > a, which yield rs » 1 and rs > 1. Here, we
consider rs = 1 and rs = 2. It was found in Ref. 4 that the
parameter s changes in the range 0  s  0.2, which
corresponds to 1  Ts /Tn  10 if d » 2 m m. Therefore, in
this work we present results where s gradually increases in
value at different combinations of the other three parameters.
Fig. 3. (Color online) Same as Fig. 1 but with G = 150.
3. Results and discussion
The MSD is calculated by the equation deviate from the Yukawa curve and the impact of s becomes
MSD (t ) = á ∣ r (t ) - r (0)∣2 ñ , more substantial as G increases. At rs = 2, the influence of
the neutral shadowing force manifests at time scales longer
where averaging is performed over all particles and simula- than several dust particle plasma oscillation periods and leads
tion times. We verify the correctness of our simulation by to smaller values of the MSD curves compared to the case
performing simulations of the MSD of a 2D Yukawa system s = 0.
and comparing our results with the data by Donko et al.10) It should be noted that the physically meaningful data on
(see Appendix). the MSD are limited on the horizontal (time) axis due to
In Figs. 1–3, the impact of neutral shadowing force on the periodic boundary conditions. This limit arises because the
MSD of dust particles is presented for the case k = 1. sound speed has some transit time ts across the simulation
The graphs of the MSD from Figs. 1–3 reveal that when box. When t > ts the sound waves re-enter the main box and
rs = 1 there are no differences in the curves no matter the G the MSD loses its physical accuracy.7,10) Thus, the horizontal
and s values. However, when rs = 2 the MSD curves start to axis wd t is restricted by wd ts.
SHHE02-2 © 2020 The Japan Society of Applied Physics
Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 59, SHHE02 (2020)
Fig. 4. (Color online) MSD of 2D system of dust particles at k = 2,
G = 50 and friction coefficient g * = 0.01. The results for steadily increasing
s at rs = 2 and rs = 1 are shown. Both axes are in logarithmic scale.
Fig. 5. (Color online) Same as Fig. 4 but with G = 100.
Fig. 6. (Color online) Same as Fig. 4 but with G = 150.
Fig. 7. (Color online) Diffusion exponent a as a function of time at rs = 2, k = 1 and friction coefficient g * = 0.01. The results for three values of G are
shown. The horizontal axis is in logarithmic scale with wd t in the domain from 0.3 to 50.
SHHE02-3
Y. Q. Aldakulov et al.
The sound speed depends on k and in our case it also
depends on s as was shown in Ref. 10. For k = 1 and
s = 0.2 the sound speed is estimated as c » 0.9 awd. For
N = 900 and box length L = pN a we find the reduced
transit time to be equal to wd ts = pN /0.9 » 60.
The MSD results for k = 2 are presented in Figs. 4–6.
For this case, using the same arguments and a sound speed
of c » 0.5 awp, the transit time is found to be
wd ts = pN /0.5 » 106. From Figs. 4–6 we see that at
k = 2 the neutral shadowing force with rs = 1 has no impact
on the MSD. As in the case with k = 1, at rs = 2 and k = 2
the neutral shadowing force reduces the MSD curves at time
scales longer than several dust particle plasma oscillation
periods.
To investigate the diffusion characteristic at different
scales, the MSD is commonly parametrized as11)
MSD (t ) = Ct a, (4 )
where C is some constant and a is the diffusion exponent. The
value of a can be used to classify diffusion. When a = 2 the
ballistic regime is in place, the a = 1 case is normal diffusive
motion, and the so-called anomalous regime is characterized by
a < 1 (subdiffusion) and a > 1 (superdiffusion).10,11)
For the case rs = 2, Figs. 7 and 8 show graphs of a as a
function of time, which are extracted from the MSD data
using Eq. (4). It is evident that as s increases, the motion
more rapidly tends to the diffusive and subdiffusive regions
with time. Remarkably, compared to the case without a
neutral shadowing force (1), the system with s ¹ 0 is in the
subdiffusive regime for a much longer period of time as G
becomes larger for both k = 1 and k = 2.
Ott et al.12) showed that in the case of the Yukawa system,
anomalous diffusion unavoidably changes to normal diffu-
sion at sufficiently long times. This is also the case in the
considered system for certain values of s and G (e.g. see the
data for s  0.12 and G = 100 in the middle subplot of
Fig. 7). However, with increases in G and s the transition
from subdiffusion to normal diffusion is strongly hindered.
For instance, for the case of s = 2, rs = 2, k = 1 and
G = 100, we cannot find a trend of changing of subdiffusion
to normal diffusion when performing simulation with
N = 50 625 particles [see Fig. 9].
We see from Fig. 9 that at k = 1, the MSD approaches the
regime with normal diffusion with noisy fluctuations at long
© 2020 The Japan Society of Applied Physics
Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 59, SHHE02 (2020)
Fig. 8. (Color online) Diffusion exponent a as a function of time at rs = 2, k = 2 and friction coefficient g * = 0.01. The results for three values of G are
shown. The horizontal axis is in logarithmic scale with wd t in the domain from 0.3 to 100.
Fig. 9. (Color online) Diffusion exponent a as a function of time with
N = 50 625 particles at rs = 2, G = 100 and friction coefficient g * = 0.01.
The results for two values of k are shown. The dashed line corresponds to
normal diffusion. The horizontal axis is in logarithmic scale with wd t in the
domain from 0.3 to 500.
times due to poor statistics (an insufficient number of
particles in the simulation) as there is always a small fraction
of particles passing back and forth the boundary of the main
simulation box. However, this is not related to quasiperiodic
oscillations at time scales of the order of tens of dust particle
plasma periods (see Figs. 7–9). In contrast to the k = 1 case,
at k = 2 there is no transition from subdiffusion to normal
diffusion at a time scale of up to 500 dust particle plasma
periods (see Fig. 9).
4. Conclusions
We conclude based on the results of this work that a neutral
shadowing force has an impact on the dynamical properties
of cryogenic complex plasma systems at Tn < 10 K and
P < 10 Pa. This condition allows the mean free path of
neutral gas particles l to exceed the mean inter-dust-particle
distance, where l determines the impact radius of the neutral
shadowing force. We find that at G  100, the neutral
shadowing force leads to subdiffusion on time scales of the
order of tens or hundreds of dust particle oscillation periods.
Moreover, the neutral shadowing force strongly inhibits the
transition from anomalous diffusion to the normal diffusion
regime.
The MSD of dust particles can be directly measured in
experiments (e.g. see Ref. 13). Therefore, we expect that the
results of the presented simulations, particularly those for
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Y. Q. Aldakulov et al.
subdiffusion, can be experimentally checked at cryogenic
complex plasma conditions. Note that the possibility of
realization of dusty plasma research at gas temperatures as
low as 2 K was demonstrated recently.13)
Even though experiments at cryogenic conditions are more
challenging, further experimental and theoretical exploration
of dusty plasmas at cryogenic temperatures can reveal new
interesting phenomena and lead to new dusty plasma
applications.14) Indeed, at cryogenic conditions (with neu-
trals’ temperature of the order of one kelvin) many effects
and processes like wakefields,15–17) plasma polarization,18–20)
micro- and nano-sized dust particle growth,21) and magnetic
field effects22–24) can be significantly different from those at
normal conditions (i.e., with neutrals at about 300 K).
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education and
Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan via Grant No.
BR05236730, “Investigation of fundamental problems of
physics of plasmas and plasma-like media” (2020).
Appendix
Analysis of the MSD of dust particles is the main goal of this
work. Therefore, the correctness of the MSD data is critical.
In order to check the accuracy of our simulation, we compare
our results with the data from Ref. 10 where a 2D system of
particles with Yukawa pair interactions was considered. The
comparison is presented in Fig. A·1, where perfect agreement
can be seen.
Fig. A·1. (Color online) Comparison of MSD at k = 2 and
G = 20, 60, 100, 200, 400.
© 2020 The Japan Society of Applied Physics
Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 59, SHHE02 (2020)
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Zhandos A. Moldabekov https://orcid.org/0000-0002-
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