Investigation of plasma-dust structures in He-Ar gas mixture

The paper reports on the first experiments with plasma-dust formations in dc gas discharge plasma for a He-Ar mixture. It is shown that the choice of light and heavy gases for the mixture suppresses ion heating in electric field under the conventional conditions of experiments and results in a supersonic jet with high Mach numbers. Distribution functions for drifting ions in the gas mixture are calculated for various mixture concentrations, electric field strengths, and gas pressures. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.