Introduction Plasmas with dust grains are of interest both for the cosmic space as well as for the laboratory plasmas. Examples include cometary environments, planetary rings, the interstellar medium, the Earth’s and other planets magnetospheres [1]. Dust has been found to be a determinant component of rarefied plasmas used in the microelectronic processing industry [2], and it may also be pres...

[1] In this study we derive an analytical expression to describe the electrostatic field in a dust cloud with grain trajectories defined by fluid dynamics and grain charging via contact electrification. In order to solve for the electric field, we merge the fluid dynamic–driven grain motion directly into the basic electrostatic formalism to end up with an electric field dependent on meteorologi...

The charging of conducting and insulating dust grains in flowing plasmas in the presence of a directed photon flux is studied using Particle-In-Cell numerical simulations. We analyze the charge on dust grains for different photon fluxes and different angles of the photon incidence with respect to the supersonic plasma flow direction. For conducting grains we find that the total charge can be ef...

We investigated the electrostatic charging behavior of submillimeter-sized dust particles located in Saturn's magnetosphere. The charging effects we considered included electron/ion capture from the magnetospheric plasma, electron/ion capture from the solar-wind plasma, the photoelectric effect from solar radiation, and secondary electron emission from energetic electrons. In our results, we sh...

The shielding of dust particles by each other in a dusty plasma is studied taking into account the effects of dust charging. It is shown that the assumption of a Boltzmann response for dust species is not appropriate under these circumstances. Further, it is shown that in the close-packing limit, dust grains screen each other by charge reduction, and an expression is obtained for this shielding...

Dust ion-acoustic shocks in a Q machine device are considered. For their description the so-called hydrodynamic ionization source model is used. The model is appropriate for the description of the laboratory experiments in a Q machine device and contains the most important basic mechanisms responsible for the formation of the dust ion-acoustic shocks. A comparative analysis of various dissipati...

Charging mechanism of dust particles in a nonuniform discharge plasma under cryogenic environment is studied theoretically. The plasma density and temperature effects on dust grain charging are investigated with characteristic time scales of density variation and temperature relaxation in consideration. The charge of a dust grain, initially placed in a discharge plasma and cooled to cryogenic t...

Photoelectric charging measurements are presented of dust grains in vacuum for isolated grains and for grains near a photoemissive surface. Isolated grains reach a positive-equilibrium floating potential, dependent upon the work function of the particle, which causes the emitted electrons to be returned. Grains dropped past a photoemitting surface reach a negative floating potential for which t...

The deflection of interstellar dust grains in the magnetic field near the heliopause depends on their surface electric charge. We study the electric charging of the grains with emphasis on the secondary electron emission because of its importance in the hot plasma environment near the heliopause. We correct previous models of the secondary electron emission that overestimate the electric charge...