Wake Formation in a Polarized Dusty Plasma

Abstract

A self-consistent numerical model is presented in which a self-consistent spatial distribution of plasma potential is calculated near isolated dust particles whose shape represents an ellipsoid of revolution. In this model, self-consistent electric plasma potential is calculated with the help of Legendre polynomial expansion of a spatial space charge, while ion trajectories are calculated in the mean field approximation. This article demonstrates a large-scale study of self-consistent distributions of space charge density and plasma potential in the presence of an external electric field. The dependencies of “the ion cloud–dust particle” system on various dusty plasma parameters are calculated. The parameters are dust particles shapes and sizes, the external electrostatic field strength, and the ion mean free path. The dependencies of the dipole moment, wake local maximum, and position of the wake local maximum on these parameters are reduced to a simple analytical expression.