Paper detail

Charging and coagulation of dust in protoplanetary plasma environments

Combining a particle-particle, particle-cluster and cluster-cluster agglomeration model with an aggregate charging model, the coagulation and charging of dust particles in various plasma environments relevant for proto-planetary disks have been investigated. The results show that charged aggregates tend to grow by adding small particles and clusters to larger particles and clusters, leading to greater sizes and masses as compared to neutral aggregates, for the same number of monomers in the aggregate. In addition, aggregates coagulating in a Lorentzian plasma (containing a larger fraction of high-energy plasma particles) are more massive and larger than aggregates coagulating in a Maxwellian plasma, for the same plasma densities and characteristic temperature. Comparisons of the grain structure, utilizing the compactness factor, ϕσ, demonstrate that a Lorentzian plasma environment results in fluffier aggregates, with small ϕσ, which exhibit a narrow compactness factor distribution. Neutral aggregates are more compact, with larger ϕσ, and exhibit a larger variation in fluffiness. Measurement of the compactness factor of large populations of aggregates is shown to provide information on the disk parameters that were present during aggregation.