Cooperative Effects in Self-Gravitational and Dusty Plasmas

Abstract

The preceding Chapter, dedicated to gravitoelectrodynamics, treated the motion of charged particles through external fields of force. Now we are starting an analysis of cooperative effects owing to interactions of the particles via long-range Coulombian forces. Speaking of the Coulombian fields in a mixture of charged particles, it is tacitly agreed they are electric fields. In fact, the particles are always subject to mutual attraction due to gravitation, which effect also follows Coulomb’s law. The question whether or not the gravitational interaction is significant can be resolved numerically. Consider, for instance, two electrons at a distance d. They are mutually repulsed with the force f e E = e 2/d 2. Meanwhile, as material particles of mass m e , the same electrons are attracted with the force f e G = Gm 2 e /d2. The ratio of f e G and f e G is f E e/ f e G ~1042, which value is independent of range. Evidently, the enormous domination of electric forces over the gravitation makes it absolutely senseless to take the gravitational electron-electron interaction into account, which is indeed never done. In the case of ions, the f i E /f i G ratio is lower by several orders of magnitude but still remains far too high for any gravitational effects to be noticeable.KeywordsPhase VelocityDusty PlasmaOperative EffectDebye LengthCharged DustThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.