Superdiffusion and viscoelastic vortex flows in a two-dimensional complex plasma

Viscoelastic vortical fluid motion in a strongly coupled particle system has been observed experimentally. Optical tracking of particle motion in a complex plasma monolayer reveals high grain mobility and large scale vortex flows coexistent with partial preservation of the global hexagonal lattice structure.

The transport of particles is superdiffusive and ascribed to Levy statistics on short time scales and to memory effects on the longer scales influenced by cooperative motion. At these longer time scales, the transport is governed by vortex flows covering a wide spectrum of temporal and spatial scales.