Guided by the analogy to Mie scattering of light on small particles we show that the propagation of a Dirac-electron wave in graphene can be manipulated by a circular gated region acting as a quantum dot. Large dots enable electron lensing, while for smaller dots resonant scattering entails electron confinement in quasibound states. Forward scattering and Klein tunneling can be almost switched off for small dots by a Fano resonance arising from the interference between resonant scattering and the background partition.

We study the plasma-induced modifications of the potential and charge distribution across the interface of a plasma and a dielectric wall. For this purpose, the wall-bound surplus charge arising from the plasma is modelled as a quasi-stationary electron surface layer in thermal equilibrium with the wall. It satisfies Poisson's equation and minimizes the grand canonical potential of wallthermalized excess electrons. Based on an effective model for a graded interface taking into account the image potential and the offset of the conduction band to the potential just outside the dielectric, we specifically calculate the modification of the potential and the distribution of the surplus electrons for MgO, SiO2 and Al2O3 surfaces in contact with a helium discharge. Depending on the electron affinity of the surface, we find two vastly different behaviors. For negative electron affinity, electrons do not penetrate into the wall and a quasi-two-dimensional electron gas is formed in the image potential, while for positive electron affinity, electrons penetrate into the wall and a negative space charge layer develops in the interior of the dielectric. We also investigate how the non-neutral electron surface layer -which can be understood as the ultimate boundary of a bounded gas discharge -merges with the neutral bulk of the dielectric.

We study for a dielectric particle the effect of surplus electrons on the anomalous scattering of light arising from the transverse optical phonon resonance in the particle's dielectric function. Excess electrons affect the polarizability of the particle by their phonon-limited conductivity, either in a surface layer (negative electron affinity) or the conduction band (positive electron affinity). We show that surplus electrons shift an extinction resonance in the infrared. This offers an optical way to measure the charge of the particle and to use it in a plasma as a minimally invasive electric probe.

Within an effective Dirac-Weyl theory we solve the scattering problem for massless chiral fermions impinging on a cylindrical time-dependent potential barrier. The set-up we consider can be used to model the electron propagation in a monolayer of graphene with harmonically driven quantum dots. For static small-sized quantum dots scattering resonances enable particle confinement and interference effects may switch forward scattering on and off. An oscillating dot may cause inelastic scattering by excitation of states with energies shifted by integer multiples of the oscillation frequency, which significantly modifies the scattering characteristics of static dots. Exemplarily the scattering efficiency of a potential barrier with zero bias remains finite in the limit of low particle energies and small potential amplitudes. For an oscillating quantum dot with finite bias, the partial wave resonances at higher energies are smeared out for small frequencies or large oscillation amplitudes, thereby dissolving the quasi-bound states at the quantum dot.

A complete kinetic modeling of an ionized gas in contact with a surface requires the knowledge of the electron desorption time and the electron sticking coefficient. We calculate the desorption time for phononmediated desorption of an image-bound electron as it occurs, for instance, on dielectric surfaces where desorption channels involving internal electronic degrees of freedom are closed. Because of the large depth of the polarization-induced surface potential with respect to the Debye energy, multiphonon processes are important. To obtain the desorption time, we use a quantum-kinetic rate equation for the occupancies of the boundelectron surface states, taking two-phonon processes into account in cases where one-phonon processes yield a vanishing transition probability as it is sufficient, for instance, for graphite. For an electron desorbing from a graphite surface at 360 K, we find a desorption time of 2 ϫ 10 −5 s. We also demonstrate that depending on the potential depth and bound-state level spacing, the desorption scenario changes. In particular, we show that desorption via cascades over bound states dominates unless direct one-phonon transitions from the lowest bound state to the continuum are possible.

With an eye on dust particles immersed into an ionized gas, we study the effect of a negative charge on the scattering of light by a dielectric particle with a strong transverse optical phonon resonance in the dielectric constant. Surplus electrons alter the scattering behavior of the particle by their phonon-limited conductivity in the surface layer (negative electron affinity) or in the bulk of the particle (positive electron affinity). We identify a charge-dependent increase of the extinction efficiency for low frequencies, a shift of the extinction resonance above the transverse optical phonon frequency, and a rapid variation of the polarization angles over this resonance. These effects could be used for noninvasive optical measurements of the charge of the particle.

Macroscopic objects floating in an ionized gas (plasma walls) accumulate electrons more efficiently than ions because the influx of electrons outruns the influx of ions. The floating potential acquired by plasma walls is thus negative with respect to the plasma potential. Until now plasma walls are typically treated as perfect absorbers for electrons and ions, irrespective of the microphysics at the surface responsible for charge deposition and extraction. This crude description, sufficient for present day technological plasmas, will run into problems in solid-state based gas discharges where, with continuing miniaturization, the wall becomes an integral part of the plasma device and the charge transfer across it has to be modelled more precisely. The purpose of this paper is to review our work, where we questioned the perfect absorber model and initiated a microscopic description of the charge transfer across plasma walls, put it into perspective, and indicate directions for future research.

We study phonon-mediated adsorption and desorption of an electron at dielectric surfaces with deep polarization-induced surface potentials where multiphonon transitions are responsible for electron energy relaxation. Focusing on multiphonon processes due to the nonlinearity of the coupling between the external electron and the acoustic bulk phonon triggering the transitions between surface states, we calculate electron desorption times for graphite, MgO, CaO, Al 2 O 3 , and SiO 2 and electron sticking coefficients for Al 2 O 3 , CaO, and SiO 2 . To reveal the kinetic stages of electron physisorption, we moreover study the time evolution of the image-state occupancy and the energy-resolved desorption flux. Depending on the potential depth and the surface temperature, we identify two generic scenarios: (i) adsorption via trapping in shallow image states followed by relaxation to the lowest image state and desorption from that state via a cascade through the second strongly bound image state in not too deep potentials, and (ii) adsorption via trapping in shallow image states but followed by a relaxation bottleneck retarding the transition to the lowest image state and desorption from that state via a one-step process to the continuum in deep potentials.