Dust particle current in the presence of an external electric field

Dusty plasmas consist of electrons, ions and dust particles. The latter usually have large electric charges of the order of 1e3–1e4 elementary charges. Although the dust particles move much slower than the electrons this large charge may, in the presence of an electric field, lead to an electric current which is not quite negligible with respect to the current carried by the electrons. Therefore, the dust particle current is calculated on the basis of the asymptotic solution obtained in this work of a generalized Fokker–Planck equation following from the kinetic theory.