Speaker
Description
The presence of charged dust particles in the space environment is well-known. From observations of structures in the dust tails of comets and the Voyager observations of radial structures (“spokes”) in Saturn’s rings, the role of charged dust in the solar system has been the subject of intense study for decades. More recently, the presence of flowing magnetized dust clouds has been postulated as a mechanism for introducing modifications in interplanetary magnetic field (H. R. Lai, et al., Geophys. Res. Letters, 46, 14282, 2019). Therefore, it is of interest to perform a series of experimental investigations that may provide fundamental insights into the influence of dust in the solar system. In this study, we envision a pair of spacecraft (e.g., possibly cubesats), where the presence of charged dust modulates the transmission of electrostatic and electromagnetic waves between the two spacecraft. In preliminary studies presented here, the Magnetized Dusty Plasma Experiment (MDPX) device will be used to investigate the modification of low frequency waves (i.e., below the ion cyclotron frequency, $f$ ~ 10 – 1500 Hz << $f_{ci}$) in the presence of dusty plasma clouds in magnetized plasmas scaled to near-earth space plasma conditions. This presentation will also report on plans for the next steps in the laboratory investigations.
Acknowledgements: The MDPX device was designed and built through a grant from the NSF Major Research Instrumentation (NSF-MRI) program, PHY-1126067. The laboratory has been supported by the NSF, NSF-EPSCoR, NASA, and Department of Energy.
