A scaling law for the dust cloud in radio frequency discharge under microgravity conditions
arXiv:1403.0856 · doi:10.1063/1.4881473
Abstract
We employ the approximation of overlapped scattering potentials of charged dust particles exposed to streaming ions to deduce the "equation of state" for a stationary dust cloud in the radio frequency discharge apart from the void dust boundary. The obtained equation defines the potential of a dust particle as a function of the ion number density, the mass of a carrier gas atom, and the electron temperature. A scaling law that relates the particle number density to the particle radius and electron temperature in different systems is formulated. Based on the proposed approach the radius of a cavity around a large particle in the bulk of a cloud is estimated. The results of calculation are in a reasonable agreement with the experimental data available in literature.
10 pages, 7 figures, and 1 table