Toward understanding the fate of dust lost from the Martian satellites

Abstract

We have investigated the dynamics of small dust grains ejected from the Martian satellites, considering both the solar radiation perturbation and electromagnetic forces since the grains move in a magrietized plasma. Lorentx forces can dramatically change the nature of the trajectories, resulting in, for example, prolonged for submicron‐slzed grains moving through our idealized iaodel. Though temporal changes of the solar wind were ignored and we only followed grains for 20 days or less, we suggest that a permanent, non‐uniform and time‐dependent dust halo of grains predominantly around 0.1 μm may exist about Mars.