Dust and plasma properties measured using two confined particles

Abstract

We consider two isolated, interacting dust particles confined in plasma. Measurements of normal mode frequencies are used to determine the dust charge, the Debye shielding length and the anisotropy of the confining potential well. For dust particles confined near the sheath edge, the vertical electric field and an effective electron temperature are also determined. This method is used to characterize the sheath above a short rectangular trench in the powered electrode of a radio-frequency discharge.