This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This award supports the acquisition of a state of the art instrument, a tomographic particle image velocimetry system, which would allow for volumetric measurements of dusty plasma systems. As a result, new areas of research will be explored and a number of open issues in the dusty plasmas will be addressed that are not accessible given the existing diagnostic infrastructure. The scientific component of the proposed work will use the techniques previously developed by the PI and the next generation PIV diagnostic to make detailed measurements of the distribution of thermal energy and the evolutions of the thermal and transport properties of a weakly-coupled dusty plasma to address a number of open questions in the field of dusty plasmas with a level of detail that is currently unavailable in the dusty plasma community.
The acquisition of this diagnostic would represent a significant advance in the diagnostic infrastructure of the dusty plasma community. As a result, support of this proposal will position the PI at the diagnostic forefront of the dusty plasma community and would open a number of collaborative opportunities. Further, because dusty plasmas are present in many difference environments, the insight gained will have a broad impact in a number of fields. Second, it will improve access, increase use of modern instrumentation and provide mentored training to students at an undergraduate institution. Third, it will make significant educational contributions to the Physics Department at Wittenberg University through the introduction of level-appropriate curricular material that introduce an advanced diagnostic technique to undergraduates. Additionally, it will result in an enhanced integration of the PI's research and teaching activities. Finally, given the strong number of women physics majors at Wittenberg University, support of this proposal will support recruiting efforts of underrepresented populations into STEM fields.
