Hebner G A, Riley M E, Marder B M
Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185-1423, USA.
Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2003 Jul;68(1 Pt 2):016403. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.68.016403. Epub 2003 Jul 11.
The magnitude and the structure of the ion-wakefield potential below a negatively charged dust particle levitated in the plasma-sheath region have been determined. Attractive and repulsive components of the interaction force were extracted from a trajectory analysis of low-energy dust collisions in a well-defined electrostatic potential, which constrained the dynamics of the collisions to be one dimensional. The peak attraction was on the order of 100 fN. The structure of the ion-wakefield-induced attractive potential was significantly different from a screened-Coulomb repulsive potential.
