Dust acoustic waves in strongly coupled dissipative plasmas

Abstract

The theory of dust acoustic waves is revisited in the frame of the generalized viscoelastic hydrodynamic theory for highly correlated dusts. Physical processes relevant to many experiments on dusts in plasmas, such as ionization and recombination, dust-charge variation, elastic electron and ion collisions with neutral and charged dust particles, as well as relaxation due to strong dust coupling, are taken into account. These processes can be on similar time scales and are thus important for the conservation of particles and momenta in a self-consistent description of the system. It is shown that the dispersion properties of the dust acoustic waves are determined by a sensitive balance of the effects of strong dust coupling and collisional relaxation. The predictions of the present theory applicable to typical parameters in laboratory strongly coupled dusty plasmas are given and compared with the experiment results. Some possible implications and discrepanies between theory and experiment are also discussed.