Plasmakristall-4 Experiment: 10 Years of Operation in Orbit

M Pustylnik and HM Thomas and M Kretschmer and M Thoma, CONTRIBUTIONS TO PLASMA PHYSICS (2025).

DOI: 10.1002/ctpp.70063

Plasmakristall-4 (PK-4) is a microgravity complex plasma laboratory operated for 10 years on board the International Space Station. Its main purpose is the particle-resolved investigation of generic condensed matter phenomena using strongly coupled suspensions of microparticles immersed in low-pressure gas-discharge plasmas. In PK-4, both structural (string-like order) and transport (shear viscosity and heat diffusivity) properties of the microparticle suspensions were investigated. At the same time, the (polarity-switched) dc discharge in which microparticle suspensions are trapped in PK-4 exhibits a number of dust-induced plasma phenomena. In this review article, both types of phenomena as well as connections between them are discussed. The physics encountered in the PK-4 experiments is therefore reviewed in its entire complexity.

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