On the role of dust in the cometary plasma |
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Authors: | B A Klumov S V Vladimirov G E Morfill |
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Institution: | (1) Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, D-85740 Gaiching, Germany;(2) School of Physics, The University of Sydney, New South Wales, 2006, Australia |
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Abstract: | The cometary coma consists of neutral gas, plasma, and dust grains. The dust grains can influence both the neutral and charged
coma’s constituents. Usually, the presence of dust particles in a plasma results in additional losses of both electrons and
ions due to the plasma recombination on the particle surfaces. Solar radiation makes the impact of dust even more complicated
depending on the solar flux, the dust number density, the photoelectric properties of the dust particles, the dust particle
composition, the distribution of the sizes, etc. We propose a simple kinetic model evaluating the role of dust particles in
the coma plasma chemistry and demonstrate that this role can be crucial, resulting in a nontrivial behavior of both the electron
and ion densities of the plasma. We show that a coma’s dust particles can be negatively as well as positively charged depending
on their composition. These opposite charges of the grains can result in fast coagulation of dust particles, thus, forming
complex aggregate shapes of cometary grains.
The text was submitted by the authors in English. |
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