Charging of insulating and conducting dust grains by flowing plasma and photoemission

The charging of conducting or alternatively insulating dust grains in a supersonic plasma flow with a directed photon flux is studied by the particle-in-cell method. The electron emission modifies the charge distribution on the grain surface and in the surrounding plasma. The charge and potential distributions on and around a dust grain are studied for different photon fluxes and different angles of the incident unidirectional photons with respect to the plasma flow velocity vector. Continuous and pulsed radiations are considered. It is shown that photoemission allows the charge on conducting grains to be controlled, and that interactions between positively charged grains can be strong. The charging of stationary and spinning insulating grains is discussed. The simulations are carried out in two spatial dimensions, treating ions and electrons as individual particles.