Dynamics of structural rearrangement in dusty plasma liquids

Dusty plasma liquid with micro-meter sized fine particles charged and suspended in a low pressure discharge has sub-mm inter-particle spacing for directly monitoring the dynamical behavior of micro-structure and motion. In this paper, we briefly review the generic behavior of structural rearrangement in our dusty plasma liquid experiment. The micro-liquid can be treated as a strongly coupled nonlinear network under stochastic thermal agitation. The cooperative stick-slip hopping is the basic process for structural rearrangement. Under the external persistent shear stress or the topological confinement from boundary, the information are cascaded and eventually randomized in the network through many body interaction and thermal kicks. Structural rearrangement occurs in the form of avalanche type clusters involving a small number of sites.