Dust transport in a magnetized radio-frequency discharge under microgravity conditions

Abstract

Dust is found in plasmas used in industrial applications, such as microelectronics and solar cell manufacturing, in fusion plasmas, where it is usually the result of plasma-wall interactions, and in plasmas in space, such as planetary atmospheres, cometary tails, planetary rings, interstellar molecular clouds, and star and planet formation regions. In plasma applications, magnetic fields are occasionally used, mainly to confine the plasma. In space, however, magnetic fields are very often present and they may strongly influence the behavior of dusty plasma, for instance in the formation of stars and planets. We extended a fully self-consistent two-dimensional fluid model for radio-frequency discharges by adding a homogeneous axial magnetic field and the effect it has on the transport of plasma species in a low-temperature dusty discharge. We show that the magnetic field has an important effect on the (ambipolar) diffusion of ions and electrons in the bulk of the discharge. This causes an important change in the force balance of the dust particles and in the time scales of the formation of a dust-free void. Finally, we compare the parameters of the modeled discharge with the parameters of a planet formation region around a young stellar object (YSO). We conclude that a magnetic field in both low-temperature rf discharges under micro-gravity conditions and dusty plasmas around YSO's has an important effect on the transport of dust and must be important for the formation of planets and stars.