New collective processes in dusty plasmas: applications to space and laboratories

Abstract

The status of numerous collective processes in dusty plasmas ispresented. The focus will be on theoretical and experimental studies of novel waves and instabilities, effects of non-spherical rotating dust grains, as well as some nonlinear structures (such as dust ion-acoustic shocks and holes, Mach cones, dust voids, vortices, etc). The latter are typical in astrophysical settings and inmicrogravity experiments. It appears that collective processes in a dusty plasma would have excellent future perspectives in the twenty first century, because they have not only potential applications in cosmic and laboratory environments, or in understandingthe physics of our dusty universe, but also in advancing our scientificknowledge in inter-disciplinary areas of science.