Forces on a small grain in the nonlinear plasma wake of another
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Article
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Author(s)
Hutchinson, Ian Horner
Date Issued
August 2011
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Hutchinson, I. H. "Forces on a small grain in the nonlinear plasma wake of another." Physical Review Letters, 107, 095001 (2011) © 2011 American Physical Society.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
The transverse force on a spherical charged grain lying in the plasma wake of another grain is analyzed to assess the importance of ion-drag perturbation, in addition to the wake-potential-gradient. The ion-drag perturbation is intrinsically one order smaller than the wake-potential force in the ratio of grain size (rp) to Debye length (lambdaDe). So ion-drag perturbation is important only in nonlinear wakes. Rigorous particle-in-cell calculations of the force are performed in the nonlinear regime with two interacting grains. It is found that even for quite large grains, rp/lambdaDe=0.1, the force is dominated by the wake-potential gradient. The wake-potential structure can then help explain the preferred alignment of floating dust grains.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Plasma Science and Fusion Center
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
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DOI of Published Version
http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v107/i9/e095001
