Strongly coupled dusty plasmas: finite and extended systems

Systems of confined microspheres in a gaseous plasma environment are studied. These systems of trapped “dust” particles can form extended structures where the size of the system is much larger than interparticle distance. With specially tailored confinement potentials also finite arrangements of microspheres can be formed. In these systems the structure and dynamics dramatically depend on the exact particle number. Here, three-dimensional finite systems of microspheres, so-called Yukawa balls, are investigated and their structural properties are discussed with respect to the realized configurations of ground and metastable states.