Dispersion properties of dusty plasmas

Abstract

The presence of charged dust particles in a plasma can change its dispersion properties. From the linear response of an equilibrium dusty plasma to the propagation of small perturbations, we find an average dielectric function є ( ω, k ) for the system in the case when the grain space distribution is random, and ensemble averages are taken over the random variables. For the case of high-frequency plasma waves, when for the unperturbed case (cold plasma), we find that є becomes complex in the presence of the dust, leading to possible damping in a domain where Landau damping is usually negligible ( ω ≫ kV T ).