DUSTY PLASMAS - THE EFFECT OF CLOSELY PACKED GRAINS

A dusty plasma device recently described in the literature has been ut ilized to study experimentally the charging of dust grains by the surr ounding plasma. By varying the ratio d/lambda(D) between the intergrai n distance and the plasma Debye length, the effects predicted by Goert z and Ip (1984), and subsequently reanalyzed in a more general fashion by Whipple et al. (1985), when ''isolated'' dust grains become ''clos ely packed'' grains have been demonstrated experimentally.