Approximate determination of the plasma potential spatial distribution in the isolated dust particle vicinity

Abstract

In this paper, results of two numerical models are compared. The main purpose of these models is to determine the self-consistent spatial distributions of plasma (electric potential and space charge) near isolated spherical dust particles. In the first model, the spatial distribution of the self-consistent plasma potential is determined by expanding the plasma space charge spatial distribution in Legendre polynomials; in the second model, it is determined by direct numerical integration of the Poisson equation solution. The results show that the dependences of the system main parameters (wake magnitude and position, dipole moment of the ion cloud) coincide for small values of the external electrostatic field. With an increase in the external field strength, the dependences for two models cease to coincide, which is due to the inapplicability of Legendre polynomial decomposition in the case of strong anisotropy.