Low frequency responses, waves and instabilities in dusty plasmas

The charging collisions of electrons and ions with dust particles and the collisions of all particles with neutral atoms are self-consistently taken into account to study low-frequency modes and instabilities in dusty plasmas. These were previously treated with a multicomponent approach for fixed grain charge or taking into account the dust charge variations but not the effect of the electron/ion–dust collisions on the plasma distributions and response. A new general expression for the dusty plasma response is found and examples of waves and instabilities in dusty plasmas are considered for a broad range of frequencies lower than both the charging frequency and the frequency of plasma particle interactions with dust. Suggestions for future experiments are given.