Particle-in-cell simulation of the effect of dust charge fluctuation on ion acoustic waves in a dusty plasma

Suniti Changmai,Madhurjya P Bora

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-77772-x

Abstract

A new hybrid-particle-in-cell (PIC)-Monte Carlo Collision (h-PIC-MCC) algorithm is presented here. The code correctly simulates the damping of ion acoustic wave due to dust charge fluctuation in a dusty plasma along with other kinetic effects such as Landau damping. In the model, on event of a collision between a charged particle and a dust particle, a randomised probability determines whether the charged particle is absorbed by the dust with the collision cross section being determined dynamically by the overall interaction scenario. We find that this method is versatile enough as it can also include the size and mass distribution for the dust particles, in addition to the charged species dynamics. As such, it can be adopted to study numerous phenomena that occur in diverse dusty plasma environments. We believe that the damping of the ion acoustic wave through dust charge fluctuation is being demonstrated, for the first time, with a PIC code, in this work.

Highlights

A new hybrid-particle-in-cell (PIC)-Monte Carlo Collision (h-PIC-Monte Carlo Collision (PIC-MCC)) algorithm is presented here
We use our hybrid-PIC-Monte Carlo Collision (h-PIC-MCC) method to estimate the damping of the dust-ion-acoustic (DIA) wave, which we believe, has been carried out for the first time with a PIC simulation
Throughout our work, in many places we refer to the dust-ion-acoustic (DIA) wave as ion acoustic wave (IA) as the dust particles remain stationary and dynamically the dust dynamics does not enter into the ion acoustic oscillations

Summary

Introduction

A new hybrid-particle-in-cell (PIC)-Monte Carlo Collision (h-PIC-MCC) algorithm is presented here. The code correctly simulates the damping of ion acoustic wave due to dust charge fluctuation in a dusty plasma along with other kinetic effects such as Landau damping. Some notable early contributions in this field include the works of Jana et al.[10] and Ma et al.[12], which consider the damping of ion acoustic wave due to dust charge fluctuation, using fluid and kinetic theory, respectively. We perform a kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation to study the characteristics of the ion acoustic wave in presence of dust charge fluctuation in a dusty plasma. We use our hybrid-PIC-Monte Carlo Collision (h-PIC-MCC) method to estimate the damping of the dust-ion-acoustic (DIA) wave, which we believe, has been carried out for the first time with a PIC simulation.

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion