Anomalous dust temperature in dusty plasma experiments

Abstract

Dust heating in dusty plasmas due to thermal electric field fluctuations and dust acoustic waves is examined. It is shown that dust particles acquire large random motion in fluctuating electric fields (within dust cloud) of background plasma causing dust electrostatic pressure P_E [K. Avinash, Phys. Plasmas 13 (2006) 012109] and corresponding large temperature T_E. Due to quadratic dependence on q_d and high dust charge (∼ 10³–10⁴e), T_E is much bigger than the dust kinetic temperature T_d and is in the range of 10–300 eV for typical experimental numbers. Using global energy constraints dust heating due to dust acoustic waves is examined. It is shown that dust acoustic waves are potentially capable of heating dust to high temperatures in the range of a few hundreds of eV.