Screening of a charged dust particle within a nonlocal charging theory

Abstract

We study the influence of the nonlocality of the electron energy distribution function on the dust particle charge screening in a two-component plasma of various inert gases and nitrogen at atmospheric pressure. For our analytical and numerical calculations, we have chosen the point sink model in the diffusion-drift approximation, which, in addition to the bulk production and loss of electrons and ions, also includes the heterogeneous processes of their absorption by a dust particle. We have established that the dust particle potential distribution in the problem under consideration is a superposition of three Debye exponentials with three different screening constants. The first constant practically coincides with the inverse Debye length. The second constant is determined by the inverse length travelled by the electrons and ions in the ambipolar diffusion process in the characteristic recombination time. The third constant coincides with the inverse characteristic distance of electron energy transfer through heat conduction in the characteristic time of electron energy establishment in the processes of heating by a beam of fast electrons and energy losses in elastic and inelastic collisions. We compare our numerical calculations of the screening constants with the analytical estimates obtained in the ambipolar diffusion approximation.