The plasma condensation: Liquid and crystalline plasmas

Colloidal plasmas may “condense” under certain conditions into liquid and crystalline states, while retaining their essential plasma properties. This “plasma condensation” therefore leads to new states of matter: “liquid plasmas” and “plasma crystals.” The experimental discovery was first reported in 1994, and since then many researchers have begun to investigate the properties of condensed plasma states. In this paper we describe some of the basic physics required to understand colloidal plasmas and discuss experiments conducted to investigate the details of the interaction between the plasma particles (in particular, the interaction potential), the melting phase transition, and the thermodynamics of this new state of matter.