Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to S A Khrapak.
Measurements of effective structural (pair correlation function) and transport (diffusion constant) characteristics of the system of microparticles in dc and rf gas-discharge plasmas under microgravity conditions are reported. The comparison between these measurements and numerical simulations is used for complex plasma diagnostics.
Scattering in the attractive screened Coulomb (Yukawa) potential in the limit of strong interaction is investigated. It is shown that the scattering occurs mostly with large angles. The corresponding momentum-transfer cross section is calculated. The results are applied to estimate the ion drag force acting on an isolated micron-sized grain in low-pressure bulk plasmas.
We investigate the possibility for dust ion-acoustic solitons to exist. Compressive solitonlike perturbations are damped and slowed down, mainly due to the plasma absorption and ion scattering on microparticles. The perturbations are shown to possess the main properties of solitons. There is a principal possibility to study experimentally the role of trapped electrons in the soliton formation.
This study deals with the boundary between a normal plasma of ions and electrons, and an adjacent complex plasma of ions, electrons, and microparticles, as found in innumerable examples in nature. Here we show that the matching between the two plasmas involve electrostatic double layers. These double layers explain the sharp boundaries observed in the laboratory and in astrophysics. A modified theory is derived for the double layers that form at the discontinuity between two different complex plasmas and at the point of contact of three complex plasmas. The theory is applied to the first measurements from the Plasma Kristall Experiment (PKE) Nefedov Laboratory in the International Space Station.
The problem of calculating the ion drag force in complex plasmas is considered. It is shown that the standard theory of Coulomb scattering usually fails for the ion-dust elastic collisions. A simple approach to extend this theory is proposed. This leads to a considerable enhancement in the ion-dust elastic scattering cross section and, hence, increases the ion drag force in comparison with the previous analytical results. Analysis shows that the ion drag usually exceeds the electrostatic force in the limit of weak electric field. We suggest that this is the cause of the central "void" observed in microgravity complex plasma experiments.
The interaction potential of two charged microparticles in a plasma is studied. Violation of the plasma equilibrium around the dust particles due to plasma-particle inelastic collisions results in three effects: long-range (non-Yukawa) electrostatic repulsion, attraction due to ion shadowing, and attraction or repulsion due to neutral shadowing (depending on the sign of the temperature difference between the particle surface and neutral gas). An analytical expression for the total potential is obtained and compared with previous theoretical results. The relative contribution of these effects is studied in two limiting cases-an isotropic bulk plasma and the plasma sheath region. The results obtained are compared with existing experimental results on pair particle interaction. The possibility of the so-called dust molecule formation is discussed.
A dust particle in a plasma acquires electric charge by collecting electrons and ions, and sometimes by emitting electrons. The charging currents consist of discrete charges, causing the charge to fluctuate around an equilibrium value. We developed a model yielding a general expression for the charge fluctuations' temporal autocorrelation function. Both the magnitude and characteristic time of fluctuations can be obtained, knowing the specific form of charging currents. Numerical results are presented for different charging mechanisms, including charging by thermionic and photoelectric emission. It is shown that for all charging mechanisms the amplitude of fluctuations varies as DeltaZ = alpha square root [ ], where is the equilibrium dust grain charge in units of electron charges.
Random charge fluctuations are always present in dusty plasmas due to the discrete nature of currents charging the dust particle. These fluctuations can be a reason for the heating of the dust particle system. Such unexpected heating leading to the melting of the dust crystals was observed recently in several experiments. In this paper we show by analytical evaluations and numerical simulation that charge fluctuations provide an effective source of energy and can heat the dust particles up to several eV, in conditions close to experimental ones.