Electrostatic oscillations in the presence of grain-charge perturbations in dusty plasmas

Abstract

The properties of electrostatic oscillations and instability phenomena are studied, accounting for the time-dependent variation of the grain electric charge due to wave motions in an unmagnetized dusty plasma. It is found that charge fluctuations on the dust grains give rise to two purely damped modes, in addition to causing a collisionless damping of the existing normal modes. Furthermore, some interesting electrostatic instabilities arise in the presence of an equilibrium drift of charged fluids.