Charging of dust in thermal collisional plasmas

Abstract

Thermal strongly collisional dusty plasma is studied. The electrical neutrality of the plasma suggests that the gas phase has some electrostatic energy when the plasma contains charged dust grains. The value of this energy determines the interphase interaction and ionization balance in the plasma. Proceeding from this, a new method of calculation of the dust grains' charges in plasmas with any number of ions (down to zero) has been proposed. The correspondence between the theory and the experimental data is demonstrated.