Dust-plasma sheath: A new dissipative self-organized structure

It is shown that the presence of dust near the wall of a low-temperature pl asma leads to formation of a dissipative structure confining dust and plasm a particles and creating the specific dust-plasma layer. This equilibrium s tructure is formed self-consistently with the fields of dust particles. It is demonstrated that all properties of the dust-plasma sheath depend only o n one parameter-the March number of the ion flow, which have allowed zones and can be less than unity, in contrast to the features of the plasma sheat h without influence of dust. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S1070 -664X(99)05108-3].