Multiple timescales in a strongly coupled dusty plasma revealed by survival-function analysis

Under liquidlike conditions, particles are found to rearrange on multiple timescales in a two-dimensional dusty plasma experiment. Our analysis is based on survival functions, which are time-series graphs of the probability that a particle's number of nearest neighbors remains unchanged. Nondefects are found to exhibit two distinct timescales, revealed by an elbow in their survival function. Defects have survival functions that are more nearly exponential, with decay rates that offer insight at a microscopic level into the viscoelastic relaxation in a liquid.