Eur. Phys. J. D (2014) 68: 277
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2014-50183-6

Regular Article

Numerical study of a dust-contaminated electron plasma^*

¹ INFN Sezione di Milano and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Celoria 16, 20133 Milano, Italy
² Dipartimento di Fisica and CNISM, Università della Calabria, Ponte P. Bucci 31C, 87036 Rende ( CS), Italy
³ INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro, Viale dell’Università 2, 35020 Legnaro, Italy

^a e-mail: giancarlo.maero@unimi.it

Received: 6 March 2014
Received in final form: 13 June 2014
Published online: 1 October 2014

Abstract

The collective behaviour of dusty plasmas is heavily affected by the presence of a small fraction of micrometric or sub-micrometric dust particles which collect a large surface charge. While dusty plasmas under study are usually quasi-neutral, we propose here an investigation on a magnetized nonneutral plasma (a situation found for example in Penning traps) where a conventional plasma with a single sign of charge (e.g. electrons) is contaminated by a dust population. We simulate the two-dimensional dynamics of such a plasma in the plane orthogonal to a homogeneous magnetic field with a tailored Particle-In-Cell code implementing a mass-less fluid (drift-Poisson) approximation for electrons and a kinetic description for the dust component, including gravity effects. Simulations with a range of initial conditions are performed to observe the influence of dust on the diocotron instability developing in the electron plasma. The early stage of the growth of diocotron modes is analyzed by Fourier decomposition. The fully non-linear evolution is studied by means of a statistical analysis of probability density functions and flatness of spatial vorticity increments in order to characterize the intermittency properties of the turbulence.