Peculiarities of dusty plasma space distribution in traps

The distributions of dust particle density in the various types of electromagnetic and gravitational traps are discussed to clarify the specific behaviour of these distributions for changing parameters of plasma. Correlations between the dust particles (Yukawa interaction potential) are taken into account by the use of the density functional formalism for finite temperatures in electro-gravitational and spherical traps. Because the volume and in many cases the number of particles (with change of the external conditions) in the traps are undetermined quantities, we suggest a possible determination for the average density in traps. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd