Plasma anisotropy around non-spherical conductive dust particle

Abstract

This paper presents a computational model that allows self-consistent simulation of plasma distributions around isolated strongly charged dust grains with different geometries: spherical, ellipsoidal, and diskshaped dust particles. All particles in this work were considered conductive and were oriented so that cylindrical symmetry was preserved in the computational area. Dust particles of various shapes were placed in an external field, and the process of ion focusing and the formation of a wake behind them were studied. As a result of the calculation by this model, self-consistent distributions of the space charge and plasma potential around non-spherical dust particles, as well as the dependence of the main characteristics of the wake - the magnitude of the first potential maximum and its position - on the magnitude of the external field was obtained. The analysis of spatial distributions showed that near the dust grains of the same electric capacity almost identical spatial distributions of the space charge and potential are formed. When normalizing the dependence of the wake maximum value on the root of the electric capacitance, all data are described by a single parametric curve with good accuracy, which allows one to predict the plasma parameters around the dust particle without resorting to direct calculations.