Ion-dust streaming instability with non-Maxwellian ions

Abstract

The influence of non-Maxwellian ions on the ion-dust streaming instability in a complex plasma is investigated. The ion susceptibility employed for the calculations self-consistently accounts for the acceleration of the ions by a homogeneous background electric field and their collisions with neutral gas particles via a Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook collision term [e.g., A. V. Ivlev et al., Phys. Rev. E 71, 016405 (2005)], leading to significant deviations from a shifted Maxwellian distribution. The dispersion relation and the properties of the most unstable mode are studied in detail and compared with the Maxwellian case. The largest deviations occur at low to intermediate ion-neutral damping. In particular, the growth rate of the instability for ion streaming below the Bohm speed is found to be lower than in the case of Maxwellian ions, yet remains on a significant level even for fast ion flows above the Bohm speed.