Dr. Carlos Romero-Talamas joined the Mechanical Engineering Department is January 2013. His research is focused on understanding basic interactions between materials, charged
particles, and electromagnetic radiation. Dusty plasmas, which consist of large
collections of electrons, ions, molecules, and charged dust grains, are of
great interest to us. Relevance and applications of dusty plasmas range from
astrophysics to materials processing. Research is carried out in both theory
and experiments.
There is particular interest in the strongly coupled regime, which leads to dusty plasma crystallization, and in the basic properties of this type of so-called soft matter. Characterization of dusty plasmas is carried out with special diagnostic techniques, some of which are being developed here. Design and construction of an experimental facility that includes the production of strong magnetic fields through the dusty plasmas is underway.
