Waves in Dusty Plasmas

Abstract

Summary form only given. Dusty plasmas are ionized gases containing massive charged dust grains. The presence of charged dust in a plasma can affect the behavior of waves and instabilities and also the interaction of electromagnetic (EM) waves with the plasma. We discuss some recent theoretical work in these areas. Instabilities may play important roles in various applications in both laboratory and space dusty plasmas. First, we consider conditions for exciting dust acoustic or drift instabilities in laboratory dusty plasmas with strong magnetic fields and discuss implications for the stability of plasma crystals. Next we consider instabilities in dusty plasmas in the Earth's ionosphere (associated with meteorites or rocket exhaust), along with implications for backscatter. Finally we consider beam-plasma instabilities in a strongly coupled dusty plasma in the context of suggesting experiments. The interaction of EM waves with a dusty plasma may lead to possible applications. We discuss several, including the use of dust plasma crystals as EM filters, and the applications arising from the use of dust grains that can exhibit surface plasmon resonances