Grain charge in dusty plasmas

Measurements [Barkan ef al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 73, 3093 (1994)] of the grain charge in dusty plasmas have shown that it can be significantly reduced with respect to the single grain charge. This can have important consequences on the still open problem of strong vs weak coupling in many experiments with dusty plasmas. A simple charging model, based on the linearized Vlasov equations for the plasma particles, gives results in good agreement with the measurements and can be used to determine the grain charge in many experimental situations. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.