Simulations of ion–dust streaming instability in a highly collisional plasma

Abstract

The excitation of low frequency dust acoustic (or dust density) waves in a dusty plasma can be driven by the flow of ions relative to dust. We consider the nonlinear development of the ion–dust streaming instability in a highly collisional plasma, where the ion and dust collision frequencies are a significant fraction of their corresponding plasma frequencies. This collisional parameter regime may be relevant to dusty plasma experiments under microgravity or ground-based conditions with high gas pressure. One-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations are presented, which take into account collisions of ions and dust with neutrals, and a background electric field that drives the ion flow. Ion flow speeds of the order of a few times thermal are considered. Waveforms of the dust density are found to have broad troughs and sharp crests in the nonlinear phase. The results are compared with the nonlinear development of the ion–dust streaming instability in a plasma with low collisionality.

Physical aspects of dust–plasma interactions

“…[247] In spite of the broad abundance of situations supporting the DAW instability, we will not go deep into its theory and refer the interested reader to the papers published within the recent 30 years. [193,243,[248][249][250][251][252][253][254][255][256] We will instead concentrate here on the most important issues in understanding the physics of the DAW instability.…”