  Dedicated experiments on melting of 2D plasma crystals were carried out. The
melting was always accompanied by spontaneous growth of the particle kinetic
energy, suggesting a universal plasma-driven mechanism underlying the process.
By measuring three principal dust-lattice (DL) wave modes simultaneously, it is
unambiguously demonstrated that the melting occurs due to the resonance
coupling between two of the DL modes. The variation of the wave modes with the
experimental conditions, including the emergence of the resonant (hybrid)
branch, reveals exceptionally good agreement with the theory of mode-coupling
instability.
