Effect of charge reduction on shielding in dusty plasmas

The shielding of dust particles by each other in a dusty plasma is studied taking into account the effects of dust charging. It is shown that the assumption of a Boltzmann response for dust species is not appropriate under these circumstances. Further, it is shown that in the close-packing limit, dust grains screen each other by charge reduction, and an expression is obtained for this shielding scale length.