Charged Dust in the Earth’s Magnetosphere

Abstract

We have considered the electrody~amic effects on small AlzO 3 spherules dttmped into the Earth's magnetosphere in large quantities during solid rocket propellant bums. The charges acquired by these grains in all regions of the terrestrial environment (plasmasphere, magnetosphere, and solar wind) are modest. Consequently electrodynamic effects are significant only at the lower end of the dust size spectrum (Rg < 0.1 ~tm). In that case, the electrodynamic forces conspire with solar radiation pressure to eliminate the grians from the magnetosphere in a comparatively short time. Although not studied here in detail, we anticipate a similar fate for fine micrometeoroids entering the Earth's magnetosphere, with the electrodynamic effects playing an even more important role.

The Charging of Planetary Rings

“…The absorption of solar UV radiation releases photoelectrons, and hence, constitutes a positive charging current (Horányi et al 1988). Its magnitude depends on the material properties of the grain, i.e., its photoemission efficiency, and on the grain's surface potential, which may, if positive, recapture a fraction of the photoelectrons.…”

“…The photoelectric current described here follows from Horányi et al (1988)'s work, which, in turn, refers to Feuerbacher et al (1973). They carried out calculations for grains of high (material: Al 2 O 3 ) and low (material: C) photoelectric yields, taking into account the material's full frequency dependence and the energy distribution of the emitted photoelectrons.…”

“…where M = the ratio of the dust-to-plasma relative velocity w over the ion thermal speed (M = "Mach" number (Horányi et al 1988), and erf(x) is the error function):…”

Interstellar Dust Charging in Dense Molecular Clouds: Cosmic Ray Effects

“…) (see, e.g., Horanyi et al 1988), which determines the charge dependence of the flux (and leads to Equation (5) for the Maxwellian spectrum). As shown below, the charge distribution is usually concentrated within  Z 3 | | ; since the magnitude of the floating potential isẽ a 10 2 meV, while the energy of CR electrons contributing to the charging is E ∼ 10 eV, the OML correction can be safely neglected and hence J e CR does not depend on Z.…”

Landau damping of dust acoustic solitary waves in nonthermal plasmas

“…[34][35][36][37] . The aim is to study the variation in characteristics of dust acoustic nonlinear structures (shocks and solitons) in the presence of Landau damping within a plasma containing two temperature nonthermal ions.…”