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.