Wake potential of a dust grain in a plasma with ion flow
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Department of Physics, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas 79409-3102 (United States)
- Research Centre for Theoretical Astrophysics, School of Physics, University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006 (Australia)
Debye screening potential and wake potential for a moving dust grain in a collisionless plasma with ion flow is studied. When a relative velocity of the dust grain exceeds the ion acoustic velocity, the oscillatory wake potential is formed in a circular cone behind the particle and produces potential minima in a periodic manner. The ion acoustic collective effects on dust particles contribute to the formation of the periodic structure. The characteristic spacing between the potential minima are several times of Debye wavelength in height and in radius. Such a periodic structure may be relevant to the formation of Coulomb quasilattices (plasma crystals) observed in the dusty plasma laboratory experiments. {copyright} {ital 1997 American Institute of Physics.}
- OSTI ID:
- 435169
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 4, Issue 1; Other Information: PBD: Jan 1997
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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