Effect of ion-neutral collisions on the charging of a dust particle

Abstract

of ion-neutral charge-exchange collisional process on the charging and shielding of a single dust particle immersed in an infinite plasma under dierent operating conditions is studied. The fully kinetic evolution of the plasma is accounted for by use of a two-dimensional Particle-in-Cell method in a cylindrical symmetric geometry, where both ion and electron species are tracked. Collisions are considered as probabilistic events which depend on the specific collision frequency. The variation of the steady-state dust particle potential with increasing collisionality is presented and discussed. The ions energy distributions at various locations and at increasing collisionality are shown and compared to their local Maxwellian distributions.