  A defocusing imaging technique has been used as a diagnostic to identify
binary agglomerates (dimers) in complex plasmas. Quasi-two-dimensional plasma
crystal consisting of monodisperse spheres and binary agglomerates has been
created where the agglomerated particles levitate just below the spherical
particles without forming vertical pairs. Unlike spherical particles, the
defocused images of binary agglomerates show distinct, stationary/periodically
rotating interference fringe patterns. The results can be of fundamental
importance for future experiments on complex plasmas.
