title: Melting and heating of two-dimensional Coulomb clusters in dusty plasmas.
abstract: The heating and melting of two-dimensional dust clusters with one additional particle in the lower layer has been investigated experimentally in a gas discharge. The full dynamical properties of the system during the entire phase transition were determined in terms of the spectral power densities of the crystal modes. A two-step melting transition is identified when the gas pressure in the discharge is reduced: first, a sudden increase of the dust temperature takes place due to an instability of the lower-layer particle resulting in a hot crystalline state of the cluster, and second, the actual transition into a fluid state is observed at a decisively lower gas pressure.
authors.affiliation: Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Engineering Sciences, Kyushu University, Kasuga, Fukuoka 816-8580, Japan.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ichiki
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ivanov
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wolter
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kawai
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Melzer