Dust-acoustic modes in self-gravitating plasmas with dust size distributions.

Abstract

Using a kinetic description, dust-acoustic waves are considered for dusty plasmas containing, besides the electrons and ions, dust particles with continuous mass (size) distributions. For broad size spectra, self-gravitational effects cannot be neglected anymore because in the competition between electromagnetic and gravitational forces, the scale tips over towards gravitation for the heavier dust grains. Self-gravitational effects are clearly interwoven with the grain size distribution and here the effects of different power-law size distributions on the propagation, damping, and instability of low-frequency waves are discussed.