The electrostatic interaction of charged, dust-particle pairs in plasmas

We report the results of a study of the electrostatic interaction between n egatively charged particles in a plasma. The goal of the study was to inves tigate the possibility of an attractive interaction which would make possib le the formation of "molecules" of particles. For all approximations relati ng the positive ion density to the local electrostatic potential that we ex amined, we find that the interaction is repulsive for all particle separati ons. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.