Effects of non‐extensive electrons on the sheath of dusty plasmas with variable dust charge

In this study, a detailed investigation of the problem of sheath is presented using the fluid model in a magnetized three‐component dusty plasma system comprising positive ions, dust grains with variable charge and q‐non‐extensive electrons (i.e., the electrons evolve far away from their Maxwellian thermodynamic equilibrium [q = 1]). The effects of q‐non‐extensivity parameter on the plasma sheath parameters are studied numerically. A significant change is observed in the quantities characterizing the sheath with the presence of the super‐extensive electrons (q < 1) and sub‐extensive electrons (q > 1). In addition, based on the orbital motion limited theory, by taking various forces acting on the dust particle into consideration, the dynamics of the dust located within the sheath, that is, the dust grain charging inside the sheath, is examined under different values of q. It is found that the q‐non‐extensivity has affected significantly the dynamics and the charging process of the dust grains in the sheath.     

两种带电尘埃颗粒的等离子体鞘层玻姆判据

采用流体方程和尘埃充电自洽模型研究了鞘边含有两种尘埃颗粒的等离子体玻姆判据. 通过拟牛顿法数值模拟了鞘边两种尘埃颗粒的存在对尘埃自身充电以及离子马赫数的影响. 两种尘埃颗粒中含量较少的尘埃颗粒数密度的增加, 导致两种尘埃颗粒表面悬浮势一个降低, 一个升高. 含量较少的尘埃颗粒的数密度越多和半径越小, 都会导致离子马赫数增大. 另外鞘边无论何种尘埃颗粒的速度增加, 鞘边离子马赫数都将减小. 关键词： 等离子体鞘层 尘埃颗粒 玻姆判据     

不同成分等离子体鞘层的玻姆判据

在一维平板鞘层中采用流体模型分别研究了不同成分无碰撞等离子体鞘层的玻姆判据.通过拟牛顿法数值模拟了含有电子、离子、负离子以及二次电子的等离子体鞘层玻姆判据.结果表明二次电子发射增加了鞘层离子马赫数的临界值,且器壁发射二次电子温度越高,离子马赫数临界值越小.负离子使离子马赫数临界值减小.而在含有二次电子和负离子的等离子体鞘层中,当负离子较少时,二次电子发射对离子马赫数临界值影响较大;当负离子增加时,离子马赫数的临界值则主要受负离子的影响. 关键词： 鞘层 等离子体 玻姆判据     

Plasma–wall transition in the quasi‐neutral region of collisional and stationary plasmas in a magnetic field enclosed by totally absorbing walls

The structure of stationary electron–positive ion plasmas in spatially limited vessels is analysed with special emphasis on the plasma–wall transition using different physical models. Basic investigations are carried out in a two‐fluid model, which is supplemented by ionization and oblique magnetic fields. Collisions between the two particle species were taken into account, as well as the dependence of the collision frequency on the particle density. For the case of non‐vanishing magnetic fields, electrons are not assumed to be in Boltzmann equilibrium. The investigated one‐dimensional domain is limited by totally absorbing walls on each side. Stationary states are considered, in which ionization sources balance the wall losses. To also take into account kinetic effects, simulations in a quasi‐neutral hybrid model are performed. The hybrid model assumes the electrons as a fluid and treats the ions using a particle‐in‐cell (PIC) method. A new way of ensuring the Bohm criterion is used by removing those superparticles impeding the wall. When comparing the results, both models reveal differences, especially when ionization from a resting neutral gas or weakly magnetized plasmas is considered, causing a broadening of the ion distribution or anisotropy effects, respectively.     

尘埃等离子体鞘层的玻姆判据

采用流体方程和自洽电荷变化模型研究了尘埃等离子体鞘层的玻姆判据. 讨论了离子临界马赫数和尘埃粒子临界马赫数随尘埃密度变化的关系, 以及尘埃表面势随尘埃密度变化的趋势. 由于鞘边尘埃粒子的存在, 离子必需以大于声速的速度进入鞘层; 随尘埃密度的持续增加, 离子的临界马赫数增加到一个最大值后开始逐渐减小. 数值计算得到的结果满足Sagdeev势的定性分析. 关键词： 等离子体 鞘层 玻姆判据     

Theoretical model for the effect of dust grains on self‐filamentation of a gaussian electromagnetic beam in a fully ionized plasma

A theoretical model for the effect of dust grains on the self‐filamentation of a Gaussian electromagnetic beam propagating in a fully ionized plasma has been developed by employing the energy balance of the plasma constituents, perturbed electron and ion concentrations, and temperature. In this model, neutral atom ionization, re‐integration and accumulation of electrons and ions, photoelectric emission of electrons from the surface of dust grains, as well as elastic and charging collisions have also been considered. The effective dielectric constant in the presence of dust grains has been constructed. The effect of temporal growth of dust grains on various plasma parameters for different values of the dust density has been explored. The variation of the beam width with the normalized channel of propagation has been observed for distinct dust densities and dust charge states. It is observed that the non‐linearity induced by the effective dielectric constant in the presence of dust grains increases the self‐filamentation of the beam, thus enhancing the effective critical power with the dust density. Some of the outcomes of our approach are in line with experimental observations. These outcomes may be useful for explaining space and laboratory plasma experiments as well as for future studies in complex plasmas.     

Dust particles in collisionless plasma sheath with arbitrary electron energy distribution function

Dust particles often appear in industrial plasmas as undesirable product of the plasma-wall interactions. Large particles of several micrometers in diameter are concentrated in a thin layer (the sheath) above the lower electrode of the rf driven parallel plate device, where the electric force is strong enough to compensate particle’s gravity. Experimental and theoretical uncertainties are significantly increased in the plasma sheath. Common models of dust charging in the plasma sheath suppose the Maxwellian electron energy distribution function (EEDF) in conjunction with a flux of cold ions satisfying classical Bohm criterion at the sheath edge. In this paper we generalize this model to arbitrary EEDF with adapted Bohm criterion. We limit our considerations to collisionless or slightly collisional plasma, where the EEDF inside the sheath is expressed through the EEDF in the plasma bulk. Derived theoretical formulas are incorporated into numerical model, describing collisionless radio frequency (rf) plasma sheath together with the electrical charge, various kinds of forces, balancing radius and oscillation frequency of particles.     

斜磁场作用下碰撞电负性等离子体鞘层的玻姆判据

采用流体模型研究了外加斜磁场作用下的碰撞电负性等离子体鞘层的玻姆判据, 讨论了负离子和磁场对鞘层玻姆判据的影响. 研究结果表明: 在电负性鞘层中, 正离子更容易进入鞘层, 负离子的存在只能影响离子马赫数取值的下限; 而外加磁场可以使离子马赫数的取值范围整体发生移动.     

Numerical study of an electrostatic plasma sheath with non-thermal electrons and charged nanoparticles

Numerical solutions of the multi-fluid equations are used to investigate the effects of non-thermal electrons on the structure of an electrostatic plasma sheath in the presence of nano-sized dust grains. It is assumed that electrons obey the Cairns distribution [Cairns et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 22, 2709 (1995)], with a parameter α that determines the effect of non-thermal electrons and shows the deviation from the Maxwellian distribution. The results revealed that sheath parameters are strongly modified in the presence of non-thermal electrons and with increasing α the sheath width increases. With the increase in α, the absolute dust charge increases while the dust density is reduced.     

Dust Self‐Organized Structures I. Role of Ion Drag and Ion Diffusion on Screened Grains

Self‐organized dust structures are investigated using a Gurevich‐Parker model for non‐linear dust screening. The non‐linear dust drag coefficients and non‐linear diffusion coefficients are calculated numerically as functions of nonlinear parameter for screening, dust density and ion flux drift velocity. Nonlinear ion dust drag inside the structures creates an electric field with potential well for ions at the structure center. The equilibrium dust structures confine both the dust grains and the plasma particles, have a finite size and have inside an enhanced dust and ion densities. The necessary conditions for existence of equilibrium dust structures are found. The equilibrium dust structures are determined by two global parameters related to the external plasma flux and to the power of ionization. The equilibrium exist only in a restricted phase space of these two parameters and depends on the the drag coefficient at the structure center. The equilibrium requirements are found using non‐linear drag coefficient calculated numerically. It is shown that this phase space area can be broad but it is systematically decreasing with an increase of the ionization rate. It is found that equilibrium exists for dust structures with large dust and ion density concentration at the center and that for these structures the ion diffusion is strongly suppressed by ion scattering on non‐linearly screened grains. The results of the theory can be used to interpret the recently observed compact dust structures in micro‐gravity experiments and can provide some recommendations for future micro‐gravity experiments in spherical chambers (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Effects of bi-kappa distributed electrons on dust-ion-acoustic shock waves in dusty superthermal plasmas

The basic properties of dust-ion-acoustic （DIA） shock waves in an unmagnetized dusty plasma （containing inertial ions, kappa distributed electrons with two distinct temperatures, and negatively charged immobile dust grains） are investi- gated both numerically and analytically. The hydrodynamic equation for inertial ions has been used to derive the Burgers equation. The effects of superthermal bi-kappa electrons and ion kinematic viscosity, which are found to modify the basic features of DIA shock waves significantly, are briefly discussed.     

Nonlinear Dust Acoustic Waves in Strongly Coupled Dusty Plasmas with Positively Charged Dust Particles

The nonlinear propagation of dust acoustic waves is investigated in four-component plasmas consisting of positively charged dust grains, trapped ions, nonthermal electrons, and photoelectron due to ultraviolet irradiation.We use generalized viscoelastic hydrodynamic model for strongly coupled dust grain. In the weak nonlinearity limit, a modified Kadomstev–Petviashvili(KP) equation and a modified KP-Burger equation, which have a damping term coming from nonadiabatic charge variation, have been derived in the kinetic regime and hydrodynamic regime, respectively. With the increasing of UV photon flux, the hydrodynamic regime changes to kinetic regime. The approximate analytical line soliton and shock solutions are investigated in the kinetic regime and hydrodynamic regime, respectively.     

An application of the dust grain charging model to determination of secondary electron spectra

Dust grains – objects of different shapes with a size distribution from micro to nanometers – are generally considered as a part of many space as well as laboratory plasmas. Among various dust charging processes, electron-induced secondary emission plays an important role in plasmas containing a noteworthy portion of high-energy electrons. Since a part of secondary electrons has not the energy high enough to overcome the surface potential barrier, the resulting grain charge is determined not only by the secondary emission yield (related to the grain material and size) but also by the secondary electron spectrum. We have developed a model of secondary electron emission from small dust grains. In the present contribution, we discuss the profile of a secondary emission yield that can be received from the model and the measured equilibrium grain charge, both as functions of an incident electron beam energy. A comparison of these quantities leads to an estimation of secondary electron spectra. We have found that: (1) the energy spectrum of secondary electrons does not change with the energy of primary electrons and (2) the energy spectrum depends on the target material being harder for gold and silver than for glass grains.     

Effect of levitated dust kinetics in the dynamic evolution of inhomogeneous plasma sheath

The main goal here is to study theoretically the formation of plasma sheath in an inhomogeneous dusty plasma. The effect of weak ionization of the dust grains as similar to the Townsend discharge has been incorporated to see how it influences the evolution of sheath. Sheath equation has been derived to describe the properties of sheath structures analytically and numerically. It has shown that the ionization along with the inhomogeneity affects significantly the growth of sheath which has been highlighted elaborately for some typical plasma parameters. After getting well defined sheath region, dynamical behaviour of levitated dust grains into the sheath has been studied. The totality of the findings has been centred around the estimation of dust surface potential, dust sizes along with the generation of net force on dust grains. Both inhomogeneous and ionization effects allow the dust grains in acquiring different potential to sustain equilibrium in different places. As a result of this, nebulons and the dust cloudlike structures are electrically charged.     

Effect of radiative cooling on collapsing charged grains

The effect of the radiative cooling of electrons on the gravitational collapse of cold dust grains with fluctuating electric charge is investigated. We find that the radiative cooling as well as the charge fluctuations, both, enhance the growth rate of the Jeans instability. However, the Jeans length, which is zero for cold grains and nonradiative plasma, becomes finite in the presence of radiative cooling of electrons and is further enhanced due to charge fluctuations of grains resulting in an increased threshold of the spatial scale for the Jeans instability.     

Modelling of nanometer scale dust grains in tokamak

Dust poses a serious threat to tokamak operation and safety. It is important to study the behaviour of dust grains under tokamak's discharge conditions, which depends heavily on their size and charge. Existing simulations mainly address issues on dust grains with radii larger than 1 μm, in which case, the drift effect due to electromagnetic fields can be safely ignored. For nanometer scale dust grains, however, the drift effect becomes significant and a new model based on guiding-centre system needs to be established. In this work, the NDS has been done under BOUT++ framework. The simulation contains two parts. Part one, NDS evaluates the charging and ablation processes of the dust grains. In the second part, the guiding-centre orbits of dust particles are tracked in tokamak plasmas, whose parameters are obtained from BOUT++, a highly desirable C++ code package for performing parallel plasma fluid simulations with an arbitrary number of equations in 3D curvilinear coordinates. The orbit of nanodust dynamics is described by guiding centre equations for simplicity, and these equations are numerically solved by conventional fourth-order Runge Kutta method. Simulations provide results such as trajectories and evolutions of dust particles with different sizes and velocities for different tokamak geometries. Results show tungsten dust grains with a radius of a few nanometers launched from outer midplane will oscillate before totally ablated in C-Mod. The oscillation in this case is driven by the ion drag force. Larger Nanodust with a radius of 100 nm, on the contrary, cannot be completely constrained by the electromagnetic field. The high plasma temperature and density in the seperatrix region causes severe dust ablation, resulting in total ablation within several ms.     

The Double Sheath at the Plasma‐Wall Boundary

The relation between plasma parameters determining a steady‐state charged sheath at a plasma‐wall boundary was derived and analyzed using a fluid model, which accounted for inertia and partial pressure of both plasma components. The relation generalizes the well‐known Bohm criterion and, in particular, shows that a steadystate sheath may be formed in some cases where the Bohm criterion is not satisfied. Conditions allowing formation of a double sheath structure were formulated and analyzed. It was shown that the structure may be formed only if a) the generalized Bohm criterion is satisfied, and b) the Sagdeev potential has a minimum. The double sheath structure consists of two sub‐sheath of different polarity, which depends on the wall potential polarity and the relation between the plasma component temperatures and inertia. For positive wall potential, the sub‐sheath adjacent to the plasma (the sheath edge) is enriched by negative particles, and the sub‐sheath adjacent to the wall is enriched by positive particles, while the sub‐sheath polarities are reversed for negative wall potential. An analytical theory was formulated and illustrated by numerical solutions of the Poisson equation for special cases. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

尘埃颗粒与等离子体鞘层相互作用的数值模拟

通过求解一维稳态的尘埃等离子体鞘层模型,得到了等离子体鞘层势、正离子密度、电子密度和尘埃颗粒密度随一维横向的分布,Bohm判据及鞘层边界无量纲Bohm速度随尘埃密度的变化曲线,尘埃颗粒的带电量和尘埃密度的关系,尘埃颗粒的温度对尘埃颗粒自身在鞘层中分布的影响。结果表明,随着尘埃密度的增加,鞘层的厚度在减小,鞘层内的电子密度在下降,而且尘埃颗粒的带电量也在逐渐减少;随着尘埃温度的增加,鞘层的厚度减小,电子密度下降,而且鞘层附近的尘埃颗粒在逐渐增多。     

Structural Characteristics and Equation of State of the Complex Plasmas

In this paper weakly and strongly non‐ideal plasmas are considered. In both cases the equations of state for hydrogen and dusty plasmas were studied on the basis of effective potentials. In the first case the thermodynamic properties for hydrogen plasmas were studied by the method of effective potentials taking into account quantummechanical diffraction, symmetry and screening effects. For strongly non‐ideal plasma or dusty plasma the equations of state were considered using radial distribution functions and effective interaction potential, which describes interactions of charged dust grains with dipole moments. (© 2015 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Effect of dust size distribution and dust charge fluctuation on dust ion-acoustic shock waves in a multi-ion dusty plasma

The effects of dust size distribution and dust charge fluctuation of dust grains on the small but finite amplitude nonlinear dust ion-acoustic shock waves, in an unmagnetized multi-ion dusty plasma which contains negative ions, positive ions and electrons, are studied in this paper. A Burgers equation and its stationary solutions are obtained by using the reductive perturbation method. The analytical and numerical results show that the height with polynomial dust size distribution is larger than that of the monosized dusty plasmas with the same dust grains, but the thickness in the case of different dust grains is smaller than that of the monosized dusty plasmas. Furthermore, the moving speed of the shock waves also depend on different dust size distributions.