Collective effects due to charge-fluctuation dynamics in a dusty plasma

Abstract

Highly charged dust grains immersed in a plasma can exhibit charge fluctuations in response to oscillations in the plasma currents flowing into them. This introduces a new physical effect, namely, the electric charge on the dust particles becomes time dependent and a self-consistent dynamical variable. The consequent modifications in the collective properties of a dusty plasma are investigated. It is shown that these effects lead to dissipative and instability mechanisms for ion waves in the plasma and can lead to interesting applications to many laboratory and astrophysical situations.