Measurement of net electric charge and dipole moment of dust aggregates in a complex plasma

Abstract

Understanding the agglomeration of dust particles in complex plasmas requires a knowledge of the basic properties such as the net electrostatic charge and dipole moment of the dust. In this study, dust aggregates are formed from gold coated mono-disperse spherical melamine-formaldehyde monomers in a radio-frequency (rf) argon discharge plasma. The behavior of observed dust aggregates is analyzed both by studying the particle trajectories and by employing computer models examining 3D structures of aggregates and their interactions and rotations as induced by torques arising from their dipole moments. These allow the basic characteristics of the dust aggregates, such as the electrostatic charge and dipole moment, to be determined. It is shown that the experimental results support the predicted values from computer models for aggregates in these environments.

arXiv comment6 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Dust coagulation and fragmentation in molecular clouds. I. How collisions between dust aggregates alter the dust size distribution
• Electrostatic Barrier against Dust Growth in Protoplanetary Disks. II. Measuring the Size of the "Frozen" Zone
• Charging of Aggregate Grains in Astrophysical Environments
• Charging and coagulation of dust in protoplanetary plasma environments
• One-dimensional vertical dust strings in a glass box
• Helical Structures in Vertically Aligned Dust Particle Chains in a Complex Plasma
• Determination of the levitation limits of dust particles within the sheath in complex plasma experiments
• Agglomeration of microparticles in complex plasmas
• Charging and Growth of Fractal Dust Grains
• A Simple Method to Measure the Interaction Potential of Dielectric Grains in a Dusty Plasma
• Formation of Cosmic Dust Bunnies
• Grain charging in protoplanetary discs
• Measurement of the vertical non-uniformity of the plasma sheath in a complex plasma

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Dynamical bunching and density peaks in expanding Coulomb clouds
• Multipole Expansions of Aggregate Charge: How Far to Go?
• Evolutionary strategy for inverse charge measurements of dielectric particles